Jason Fuller & The Elementals: The Stones Of Olympus
by jmawesome
Summary: This story is about the adventures of a young mutant named Jason Fuller and his friends as they embark on a journey to save the world from Doctor Doom and the Masters of Evil. During this story several well known superheroes will make appearances but they will only be supporting characters. Thanks for checking my story out, I have many more to come ROCK ON!
1. Chapter 1: A Hero Named John

**Jason Fuller & the Elementals: The Stones Of Olympus**

**By: Jairus Funnie**

**This Story is dedicated to Stan Lee. Because of him I will always believe in heroes**

**Prologue:**

**It was December 17, 2014 in New York City, eight days before Christmas. Parents were shuffling around from store to store trying to buy the latest must haves for their children. Christmas carolers were going door to door, spreading Christmas cheer through holiday songs. Elsewhere, Spider-Man was putting the smackdown on some thugs who were trying to make way with an old lady's purse. It seemed as if this would be another average holiday season for New York and for the world. Or so it seemed. **

****Chapter 1: A Hero Named John ****

**12:00 A.M December 10, 2014, St. Mark Industries, New York Division**

**John Mason, a security guard who worked at St. Mark Industries, was working a double shift, keeping an eye on a truck load of presents in the complex basement. These Presents were all a part of St. Mark Industries Holiday Helping Hand. Every year, during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons, St. Mark Industries would donate truck loads of food, clothes, toys and various other holiday goodies to homeless shelters and foster homes. The presents that John was keeping watch over were scheduled to be delivered to their destinations in two weeks on Christmas Eve. As John was keeping watch over the presents via security footage, he noticed one of the basement doors being blasted off of its hinges and across the room. "****_Burglars"?! _****John thought at first. But that didn't make sense; the doors of the basement were reinforced Titanium, no regular weapon would be able to break through them. Plus, there was no need to steal; St. Mark Industries offered a 24 hour buffet in the lobbies of their business places as well as free presents that were always restocked everyday. "****_So why is someone breaking into the presents stockpile, and what weapons are they using that could blow a titanium door across the room." _****John was the only guard on duty, police reinforcement would soon arrive-the doors had silent alarms on them but by the time they arrived the burglars could be long gone by then. John steeled himself, grabbed his nightstick and taser gun, and started on his way down to the basement.**

**5 minutes and 20 floors later John was at the entrance of the basement. Quickly, he made his way inside and hid behind a 10 foot tall wall of presents (yes there were that many). Despite the frantic hammering of his heart, John settled down so that he could listen for clues on who the invaders could be. When he heard one of their voices, John nearly screamed.**

**"****Loki, are you certain that the artifact is in this place?" asked a dark and menacing voice.**

**"****But of course my good Doctor Doom, you of course feel the arcane energy that radiates from this area?"**

**"****Of that i do, yet i cannot pinpoint where it originates from, there must be a thousand presents in here"**

**"****So what do we do, take them all with us?" **

**"****Precisely, use your magic transport them to the Doomship, i will instruct Magneto and the others to do the same as well."**

**At this point John was frozen in fear; this was no ordinary looting, this was some part of a diabolical plan by none other than Dr. Doom and Loki, two of the most notorious villains on the planet. Though he was frightened, he knew he could not let fear get the best of him. About 100 feet to the left of him was a large pole with a large red button that had an emergency security frequency on it. This frequency would attract not only regular law enforcement, but also superheroes and the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. John knew without a doubt he had to get to this security alarm; he may not have been the brightest man alive but his did know arcane meant mystical mumbo jumbo, which meant that you did not want it in the hands of the two men who were in this room with him. Carefully, very carefully, John peered around the corner of presents, scanning for the presence of the villains. Of course, he saw nothing but more piles of presents "****_That's ok, this is a good thing," _****he thought. This gigantic amount of Christmas goodies would provide the perfect concealment environment. Also, if something fell the villains would most likely assume it was a package that fell out of place and if they came looking for the disturbance they would have to traverse the maze like environment. John, now confident that he could pull this off, took a deep breath and began to walk toward his goal. He managed to get around one corner before the edge of Loki's dagger was pressed to his throat. "Hello human," said Loki with a very cocky smirk. "Doing a bit of late night Christmas shopping?"**

**John knew he was dead, even if by some miracle he was able to trigger the alarm, there would be no way he'd ever walk out of here alive. Most people would break down or beg for mercy or that sort of thing, but not John. John knew that he had a job to do, a mission to complete; even if it cost him his life John was going to set off that alarm.**

**"****Yeah," he started. "I just have to grab that green present over there and i'll be on my way."**

**"****Sorry friend," Loki responded. "Your on Santa's naughty list, no presents for you, although you can have this dagger through your fat-"**

**"****I wanna talk to your boss" John quickly interrupted. **

**"****What?" Loki asked. Clearly, he was bewildered and confused his face said something like: did this piece of trash just talk back to me, why is he not begging for mercy like he's supposed to.**

**"****Your boss," John once again stated. "You know the guy giving you orders, the guy you work for, your boss."**

**Loki's eyes flashed dangerously, he was clearly not used to being addressed in such a disrespectful tone.**

**"****Firstly mortal, you are in no position to make any demands. Secondly, I do not have a boss, i serve no one."**

**"****Ok then," John responded. "Well then let me talk to your partner"**

**"****I am going to kill you," said Loki with a disgusted look on his face. "I am going to slit your throat and watch you bleed like the pig you are, why-"**

**"****Did your boss tell you to do that?"**

**"****HE'S NOT MY-"**

**"****LOKI" said the voice of Doctor Doom, who had just arrived to the scene. "WHO IS THIS MAN, AND WHY HAVEN'T YOU KILLED HIM YET."**

**"****This pathetic creature," started Loki, who was now seething in rage. "would have words with you my good Doctor."**

**"****What do you want fool?" Doctor Doom asked John. "Speak quickly, lest I blast you to dust for your insolence."**

**"****My name is John Mason," John started. "I wanna know why your stealing all of these presents, what's the point."**

**"****That is none of your concern mortal man, prepare to die."**

**"****Even if you do kill me, you won't get very far before the Avengers are on your tail."**

**"****What are you talking about."**

**"****This building is has a special security alarm that alerts the attentions of S.H.I.E.L.D, as soon as you leave the Avengers will be on your butts faster than you can possibly imagine."**

**Dr. Doom grabbed John by his shirt and hoisted him six feet off of the ground.**

**"****You will deactivate that alarm," he snarled. "Or you will suffer a fate far worse than death."**

**"****Ok, ok, ok," said John, who was on the verge of pissing his pants. "Just set me down and i'll reset the alarm on the access panel in the far corner." He pointed to an area that was in the general direction of the pole with the button on it.**

**Doctor Doom put him down and sent him on his way with a shove. "Go," he said menacingly. **

**Despite being in mortal danger, John had never been more calm, collected, and focused in his entire life. As he made his way towards the control panel that did not exist he began to think of ways to escape and trigger the alarm. After a minute of walking and lots of turning, John was beginning to despair when something caught his eye. About 5 feet in front of the pole with the alarm on it, was a metal rod lying on the floor. How it got there, John had no clue, maybe shrapnel from the explosion that blew the door down. Immediately, John formed a plan. To make matters more helpful his shoes were untied this would make the charade more believeable. John pretended to trip and fall, making sure to lie with his hands forward to avoid suspicion and to prevent any clanging or scuffling noises the rod might make if he tried to reach for it. Next, John slowly eased himself up, muttering a few swear words to make the fall look like an accident and managed to get a grip on the metal pipe. As Doctor Doom reached down to grab John, he was surprised as the security guard quickly whacked him across the head, making a very loud CLANG! The hit did not harm the doctor but it surprised him just enough for John to run and press the red button. Suddenly, the room was filled with the sound of the loudest sirens that had ever been heard, the sound was so loud everyone in New York City probably could hear it. John had completed his mission.**

**"****NOOOOOOO," shouted Doctor Doom as he blasted John in the chest with a bolt of lightning, killing the guard instantly.**

**"****LOKI-"**

**"****I'm on it," Loki quickly responded. He muttered a few words in ancient magic and his hands went ablaze in emerald flame. Loki then clapped his hands, releasing a shock wave that traveled through the entire basement. After the wave had dissipated, everything in the basement was gone like it vanished into thin air. As if on cue, 50 security guards and police officers dashed into the room from both sides loading their guns and ordering the two to stand down.**

**"****I do not have time for these idiots," said Doctor Doom. "Loki kill them all quickly the rendezvous with me on the Doomship; we will most likely have guests that will be arriving soon."**

**"****As you wish my good Doctor," said Loki, who was smiling and had pretty much stopped listening after kill them all. Doctor Doom clenched his fast and was engulfed in a beacon of light that teleported him to his vessel. Immediately, law enforcement opened fire on Loki and after emptying their clips which totaled at about 200 bullets, Loki was still standing. Loki retaliated by releasing a another shock wave of magic energy that blew his attackers off of their feet. Next, he pulled out two throwing daggers and quicker than the eye could see, threw them through the hearts of two cops. As the daggers left his hands, to more appeard in his hands, in a flash of green light; these daggers were put through the hearts of two more cops. After killing 30 cops and security guards this way, Loki conjured a wicked looking golden spear and assaulted the remaining 20 guards and cops. The entire fight took less than 50 seconds as Loki slashed and stabbed the guards with more strength and ferocity than they had ever seen before. When only five security guards remained, Loki used his spear to cut one in half through the waist and then threw his spear through the head of another. Then Loki pulled out three daggers and threw them all at once through the heads of the last three. Loki surveyed the battle ground gleefully, bathing in the gore and carnage. He thought about Magneto, Venom, Goblin and the others who were on their various collection assignments. "****_How many people have died tonight?" _****he thought as he surveyed the battle ground one last time. **

**"****Five down, two to go," he said as he snapped his fingers and vanished in a flash of green light.**


	2. Chapter 2: I Strike Lightning

**Chapter 2: I Strike Lightning**

My name is Jason, Jason Fuller. Right now thats all I can tell you until I am authorized to give you more information but I can tell you this. We are all in serious trouble. I mean it dude, we are all going down unless the right people find this story and band together to fight against the most ultimate evil this universe has ever seen. Because you're reading this story right now i'm gonna assume you are one of them, otherwise these stories would have never gotten into your possession. Ok, Agent Coulson has given me permission to brief you so i need you to really pay attention. My friends will help me tell these stories so don't get surprised if a jockey football player or a sweet yet tomboyish girl hijacks my stories from time to time. I only have a few things to say before I get started. For those of you that don't believe in God or gods you'd better start now or this journey will not get any easier for you. For those of you that do, prepare yourselves, it's not all nectar and ambrosia like you think it is. Also, for those of you that think being a super-hero is a glamorous job, wake up and smell the coffee, it's not as cool as its cracked up to be. Alright, now that I got that out of my system, let the story of my life (like what i did there?) begin.

6:00 A.M. December 10, 2014, My House, Somewhere in the Bronx

The blaring alarm on my iPod woke me up and I groggily got out of bed. I had about 30 minutes until the bus came to pick me up so i quickly brushed my teeth, combed my dreads, put on a purple shirt and some jeans, and packed my school stuff. Afterwards, I sat on my living room couch and turned on the TV, expecting to watch some early morning cartoons before the bus arrived. Instead, a breaking news report was on the air.

"Security footage confirms that, at 12 A.M., five of the seven buildings that store presents for the St. Mark Industries Holiday Helping Hand were broken into and robbed clean of all the presents inside," said a blonde reporter in a white snow suit. "Notorious villains such as Doctor Doom, Loki, Venom, and Magneto were confirmed to have played a part in this robbery but the question is why; heroes Luke Cage and Ms. Marvel arrived on the scene in New York an hour later, but by then 50 police officers and security guards had been brutally murdered with another 150 deaths reported at various the various other locations."

"_Typical," _I thought to myself. "_Those lousy heroes never show up when you need them but they're happy to show up after people die."_

Five minutes later, I heard the screeching sounds of the bus stopping in front of my house. I grabbed my backpack, a grey hoodie, and a jumbo honey bun to eat for for breakfast and headed out the door. As I left, I heard Doris say: "Bye Jason, have a good day."

"Thanks Doris, I will, you too," I responded as I closed the door and walked toward the bus.

Once I was on the bus, I sat down in the back seat and put on my headphones so I could listen to music for the 30 minute drive from my house to school. So, you may be wondering why called my mom by her first name right? Well the truth is she's not my mom. When I was 7 years old, my parents were killed at their jobs in Times Square when Doctor Doom and his army of Doombots were battling the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. Of course, the heroes won the battle, saved the world from whatever it is Doctor Doom was planning but my parents were killed in the crossfire. Ever since then I've always had a burning hatred toward superheroes. Sure they do a lot of good things and save the world from time to time but they are never really around when you actually need them. Where were they when Doctor Doom was stealing presents meant for the homeless? Where were they when 200 police officers and security guards were being slaughtered. Where were they when my parents were being crushed under 200 tons of rubble? In some ways, me being an orphan was their fault. Anyway, 30 minutes later my bus dropped me off at my school, Abraham Lincoln High School. Starting out, my day was the same as always. First i went to English class. Then Math and History which was followed by lunch period. For Lunch I had a burger, some fries, a salad, and a carton of strawberry milk to wash it all down. Another thing you should know about me is that i'm not very social. At lunch, I always sit by myself and I hardly ever talk to anyone. It's not that i'm a bad kid or I hate people, I just never was a very social person; at least not after my parents died i wasn't. After lunch it was time for my last and favorite class: Gym.

Gym was always my favorite class because it was an escape for me to release some of my pent up aggression through physical activity. Today we were going to play my favorite game, dodgeball. I loved dodgeball because it was a game of strength, speed, accuracy, and awareness. Plus I got to throw stuff at people's faces and not get in trouble for it.

"Okay kiddies," said Coach Johnson our Gym Teacher. "Line up, time to put you in groups; Crosby, Fuller, you two are captains, the rest of your team members have been chosen, you have five minutes, get ready.

Either by chance or by choice, Coach Johnson had me on a team filled with dorky, unathletic, and uncoordinated nerds. The other team however, was filled with strong jockey looking muscle heads. Personally, I don't know why the coach put me on this team, I had the best grade in the class plus I dominated every sport we played in class. I dunno maybe it was to give the nerd squad a fighting chance or more likely, Coach knew about my rivalry with Crosby. Ethan Crosby was this bully rich kid that was in the 11th grade with me but barely. He was built like a football player and although he was rich, he always dressed in ripped shirts, ripped pants, and dirty flannel jackets. Ethan's favorite pastime activity was to beat up anyone that had higher than a C in three or more classes (probably cause the guy has never made more than a D+ in his life). So that made me a prime target due to the fact that I have three A's and one B. You'd think that after three black eyes, two bloody noses, five knockouts the guy would take a hint that I wasn't going to take any of his bullying crap. But like I said, the guy wasn't very bright. Come to think of it, I was glad that the Coach had arranged the team like this. It was a perfect way to beat Ethan and all of his goons in front of the whole classroom. Even if it killed me, today i was going to beat Ethan Crosby.

Once our five minutes were up, both teams went to walls of the opposite side of the gym and waited for the coach to start the game.

"3,2,1…...DODGEBALL!"

The game did not start out in my favor. Remember how I said that I was on a team of nerds with no sense of coordination? Well when the game started, while my team was running to get some balls, a chinese kid named Zhao Lee tripped and fell. This wouldn't have been too bad of a thing but somehow he managed to trip me as well as six other team members. To make matters worse, Ethan and his team got every last one of the balls and eliminated the remaining four members on my team who were still standing. Instead of going on the offense like i wanted to, now I had to play defensively until i could get a decent amount of balls on my side. The game started to go in my favor when John Green threw a ball at me, which i caught and threw at a guy named Mason James. Suddenly, the game was at a 8-6 ratio in Ethan's favor, not so bad right? WRONG! 30 seconds later, Zhao tripped and fell again. Somehow, in a impossible, you-couldn't-mess-up-this-badly-even-if -you-tried action, he managed to trip the remaining four other players. Crosby and his team took advantage of this opportunity and attacked the nerd pile in a great and terrible volley of red balls. The game was now at an 8-1 ratio; in other words, i was f%* #$. Most of the balls were still on Crosby's side and he had that look in his eyes that a predator has when it knows it's prey has no escape. Crosby ordered his team to spread out in order to cut off any and all chance of escape I had. Then they threw everything they had at me in another volley of dodgeball fury. So basically, I lost the game right. WRONG AGAIN! In the last few seconds before impact, time seemed to slow down, like the balls were traveling through jello. I saw that two balls were traveling at me just the right way. So basically, I could catch them and avoid all of the other ones. This type of play would be impossible for anyone to do given the speed that the balls were traveling at but like I said, time seemed to slow down. I ran towards the two balls and caught them. They hit me square in the chest and it hurt a lot but at least I had eliminated two of Crosby's goons. Plus, now all of the balls were on my side. The game was now at a 6-1 ratio, there were 7 minutes left, and I had to eliminate six guys in such a short amount of time; somehow I was still gonna pull this off. I gathered all of the balls and lined them up a few feet from the no crossing line. Then I took the balls two at a time and bounced them as high as I could into the air; it was time to turn this game around. When two of the balls came down i quickly grabbed and threw them at two guys named Adrian and Jerome who were too stupid to realize that looking at bouncing balls is not a good strategy in dodgeball. The balls hit them square in the chest and bounced back over to my side. Next, I grabbed two more balls and threw one at a guy named Henry and another at Ethan. The ball that I threw at Henry hit him hard in the head but Ethan dodged the ball I threw at him, which sailed far back into his territory. The game was now at a 3-1 ratio. As Ethan scrambled to get the only ball that was on his side, I grabbed two more balls and threw them at two other guys on his team. I completely missed this guy named Clark but another guy named Shawn almost caught the ball I threw at him so I quickly grabbed another one and threw it at his arm, causing him to lose what little control he had over the ball and drop it. Clark, who was the only one left on the Ethan's team besides himself, threw a ball at my legs. I quickly ducked and caught it, taking him out of the game; only Ethan and I were left and there was only 5 minutes left in the game. For three minutes, Ethan and I competed in a seemingly endless cycle of throwing, dodging, ducking, and more throwing. He may have been a moron, but he was an athletic moron (seriously, the guy was on the football, hockey, and the wrestling team, he was a monster). Finally, with one minute left on the clock, I made my winning move. I took two balls and threw one as hard as i could at Crosby's legs. He jumped over it and with a roar, I threw the other ball as hard as I could at Crosby's face. The ball hit him hard with a very loud PANG, lighting up his entire face and he fell back four feet before crashing to the ground. Just like that, I had pulled off the biggest upset in dodgeball history, even Coach Johnson gave me props before sending me and the rest of the class to change back into our regular clothes.

After I was back in my T-shirt, jeans, and my gray hoodie I went back to my seat on the bleachers and grabbed my _Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief _book to read before the bell rang to go home. Suddenly, I noticed a huge shadow loom over me and I heard the sound of Crosby's voice muttering insults over my head.

"You must think you're pretty special huh you little punk, he said.

"Well I dunno Crosby," I responded. "After I just spanked you and your dogs well, yeah I do think i'm pretty special, wouldn't you agree.

Crosby reached down, grabbed my book and threw it across the gym. I stood up fast with a look of the utmost hatred and loathing; I really, really hated this guy. The class was starting to circle us now, they knew what was about to go down.

"Aww, whats wrong little guy," he said in a mocking tone. "Did I hurt your wittle feelings, you gonna cry; I know I would if I didn't have any parents, no wonder you're so pathetic.

Everyone, including myself, had a shocked look on their faces. It was no secret that I was an orphan, but nobody ever had the guts to use that as ammo against me in a fight; then again after witnessing what I can do to someone in a fight nobody ever gave me too much trouble, except Crosby.

"Crosby, shut up," I said in a dangerously calm manner.

"I suppose being an orphan wouldn't be so bad," he continued. "If you actually had a foster mom who wasn't an old bag of dirt."

"Crosby, shut up," I said louder; at this point i was beyond livid, my insides were starting to feel like lightning.

"But I guess you were the best piece of trash she could find in that dumpster of an orphanage you little-"

"CROSBY, SHUT UP!" I shouted as I balled my fist up and slammed it into his gut.

I don't know what happened next. I remember a loud boom, like thunder and when my vision wasn't so blurry i saw Crosby lying 10 feet away from where I was standing. His clothes were burnt and had holes in them as if he was blasted with fire. Everyone was running and screaming as if they had seen something scary.

"DUDE DID YOU SEE THAT!?" Adrian screamed to one of his buddies

"HIS HAND WAS ALL-" screamed another.

"WAS THAT LIGHTNING!?" said a screaming girl.

I had no idea what had just happened. All i knew was that whatever I just did too Crosby, it wasn't natural. I did the only thing i could do. I ran away.


	3. Ch:3 SHIELD Stops By For Dinner

Chapter 3: S.H.I.E.L.D. Stops By For Dinner

I ran as fast I could to my locker, quickly grabbed my things and made a beeline for the bus. Thank God that Crosby and his goons didn't ride on the same bus as me. In the state I was in, I would have probably blown it up with my freaky lightning powers. As I was sitting in the back seat of the bus, trying to slow my heart rate I became lost in thought. What did I just do? I didn't mean to do whatever it is I did to Crosby; God I hope he wasn't dead. My heart was still racing. I had never gotten into trouble, at least i've never been caught doing something bad but I was pretty sure that blasting my most hated enemy with 1000 volts of electricity was cause for expulsion if not incarceration. I was so lost in thought that I didn't realize that the bus was at my house until the driver called my name and woke me out of my day nightmare.

As I walked towards the door my heart started to beat uncontrollably. Had the school already identified me as the electro guy? Were there cops inside my house waiting to arrest me (not very smart on my part considering there were no cop cars around)? Worst of all, did Doris already know what I did? What would she say to me? How would she look at me? I paused at the door, took a deep breath, and opened it. As soon as I was inside, I heard the sounds of the stove boiling water which meant Doris was cooking.

"Jason, is that you?" she asked me.

"Yeah Doris, I responded.

"How was your day sweetie pie?"

"It was ok," I quickly lied, which I felt bad about. "Nothing special happened."

"Ok then; Jason can you come here and get this flour on the top shelf for me?"

"Yeah Doris, I'm coming."

Before you meet my foster mom you need to know something first; she is the sweetest, kindest, and most thoughtful old lady you could ever hope to meet in this lifetime.

She was always patient with me; never pried for information or tried to make me change my behavior. She had this cool way of acknowledging the good things I did and completely ignoring the bad ones. For example, when I came home from a fight, instead of scolding me or grounding me, our conversation went something like this:

Doris: "What happened sweetie,"

Me: "I got into a fight"

Doris: "Why?"

Me: "Because this guy threw eggs at my shirt,"

Doris: "Did you win?"

Me: "Sure did"

Doris: "Good job Jason, let's order pizza,"

She never beat me or punished me even when I really deserved it. Plus, as if she couldn't get anymore awesome; she picked me out of all the kids at that stupid orphanage I used to live at. After my parents died, I lived at that orphanage for two years. During that time I was the worst, most unwell-behaved kid you could ever meet. Yet even so, Doris still chose me over all of the other kids. Even though everyone was always saying bad things about me and saying that she should choose someone else, Doris said in loud clear words: "I want him."

She's been raising me ever since and it's been the best seven years of my life.

Anyway, when I got into the kitchen, Doris was on a chair trying to reach the flour on the top shelve (seriously, she always does this; whenever she needs something it's always where she can't reach it). I helped her down and got the flour myself. By the way, Doris is about 5'5 in height, likes to wear jeans and weird shirts, and dies her hair different colors every other month (this month it was a light shade of pink).

"Thanks honey," she said as I handed her the flour.

"No problem," I said. "So,what are you cooking?"

"You're favorite, white rice with fried cabbage, ham chunks, and fried chicken; plus, apple pie and hot caramel surprise for dessert."

That immediately made my day, Doris knew that ever since I was little this was my favorite dinner meal. Oh, and about the hot caramel surprise? You see, about five years ago, since I didn't like hot chocolate very much, Doris made me hot caramel instead. As the years went by, we started to add things into it like sprinkles, strawberries, cherries, even gummy worms. We only made the stuff on special occasions like birthdays and holidays but I guess Doris was feeling spontaneous today.

"Awesome," I said with a huge grin on my face. "Can I help you cook today?"

"Sure Jason," she said. "Go upstairs and wash your hands, then we can get started."

I ran upstairs as fast I could, not wanting to spend a second longer away from the kitchen than I had to. Once I got to the upstairs bathroom, I flipped the switch to turn the light on and was unpleasantly surprised when the light bulb overloaded and popped. "_Oh yeah," _I remembered. "_Freaky lightning powers."_

"Jason?" Doris called up. "Is everything ok; I heard something break."

"It's fine Doris," I quickly responded. "The light bulb overloaded, I'll replace it.

I opened the storage closet that was directly across from the bathroom and carefully grabbed a light bulb. Then I flipped the switch off before screwing in the new light bulb and flipped it back up again. This time the bulb didn't pop, probably because I wasn't so hyper. "_Ok," _I thought. "_It looks like my powers respond to emotion; I was angry when I blasted Crosby, I was excited when I overloaded the light bulb, so as long as I stay cool I can keep my powers contained." _I washed my hands, swept up the glass, and rejoined Doris in the kitchen.

"Ready to cook?" she asked me.

"You bet," I said.

Here's some free advice. Cook with your parents as often as you can. If you haven't already, start now. Before we got started, Doris handed me my blue cooking apron which said "Mommy's Little Helper" on it. While I was gone, she set up a playlist on her iPod for us to jam to while we worked. Another thing you should know about Doris is that she is a 15 year old fangirl trapped in an old lady's body. Seriously, she has more One Direction songs on her iPod than most school girls do, she has a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a Snapchat; plus, she actually knows how to text, use text slang, and has a pillow pet. While we were cooking, we were listening too the best of One Direction, Big Time Rush, Britney Spears, and NSYNC. As we cooked together, I felt all of the troubles of my day just fall off my shoulders; Doris had a way of helping me do that. So what if I blasted a guy with lightning? So what if I was probably going to be expelled from school and put into prison? All that mattered now was the fact that I was home with my foster mom cooking food and having the time of my life.

After about 2 hours, the food was ready to be eaten and I helped Doris move it to the table. We blessed the food but right before we actually got to eating, the doorbell rang. Immediately, my heart sank so low, it was probably in danger of being digested. We weren't expecting anyone, we didn't order anything, the people at that door could only be one of the three: cops, lawyers, or federal agents.

"Well who could that be," Doris asked. "Wait here Jase, I'll check on it.

"_Please," _I silently prayed to anyone that would listen to me. "_Please don't let it be cops, lawyers, or F.B.I._

"Jason?" Doris called in a very concerned tone. "Would you come here please; there are some men here who want to see you."

I slowly walked toward the front door, my heart racing faster than it ever had in my life. At the door I saw something more or less than I was imagining i'd see. There were three guys dress in Men In Black type suits. Two of them were tall stocky black guys wearing shades and grim expressions. They were flanking this shorter white guy with neat brown hair, calculating blue eyes and an expression that was a mix of amusement, seriousness, and judgement. His expression said something like: "_You don't look like much, but for some reason, I have to deal with you. _For some reason though I didn't have the feeling of petrifying dread anymore. Sure, these guys looked like they were the real deal but if they were gonna arrest me they probably would have already. Plus their demeanor displayed that of people who wanted to parley. They wanted to talk to me before they took any other action.

"Hello Jason," said the white guy. " How are you doing?"

Ok suddenly I was scared again. This guy knew my name and I don't mean knew it as in he heard Doris say it; I mean he REALLY knew my name. Looking at this guy I had the feeling that he knew everything about me, he probably read a file or something on who I was. I was starting to feel sick again.

"I'm fine," I responded. "Yourself?"

"Not too bad, can you step outside for a second, I need to talk to you alone."

"Now wait a minute," said Doris. "As his mother I have the right to know what you want with my son."

"Foster mother ma'am," said the white guy. "Rest assured, Jason is not in any trouble but we do need to have a quick talk with him to discuss, recent events.

"It's ok Doris," I said. "I have something to tell you anyway, I didn't want to tell you like this but I couldn't hide it for long."

I thought Doris was gonna get mad at me or cry or something but like I said, she's really good at the whole optimism thing.

"Fine," she said, trying for a smile. "Would you three gentlemen like to come in; we were just about to eat dinner and there is more than enough for everyone."

Imagine eating your favorite meal in the presence of a lion that could choose to tear you to shreds at any moment. Now, multiply that feeling by one-hundred and you'll get the feeling of how I felt during dinner time. Agent Coulson, who introduced himself before we all sat down, never took his eyes off of me for more than 10 seconds at a time. He told us that he and his friends worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. which made me nothing short of terrified. I knew what S.H.I.E.L.D. was, everyone did. They were this super spy agency that handled weird things that happened in the world, like lightning shooting dodgeballers for example. He was very polite to Doris; complimenting the house, her cooking, even making small talk about quilt patterns. The other guys pretty much just focused on their food (I didn't blame them, the food was fantastic). After dinner and dessert, everyone moved to the living room couches and Agent Coulson put some kind of bracelet on my arm.

"Just tell me everything that happened today at school," he said. "Don't lie to me, the armband will shock you if you lie to me."

I didn't know what was more insultful. The fact that he automatically assumed I would lie, or the fact that he put a device on me that would SHOCK me if I lied. Seriously, you're gonna use electricity on me? That's just bad humor. Anyway, I told Coulson everything about my day; from the time before gym, the dodgeball game (I went into detail about that), and the moment where I fried Crosby with electricity and ran away. I willed my hands to sure with a little bit of electricity to get my point across which wasn't hard considering how nervous I felt at the moment. Doris made a strangled yelp when she saw that and I couldn't help but feel guilty. Doris could take a lot of things but I was pretty sure this was way more than she could handle.

"So why did you run away?" Agent Coulson asked me.

"I was afraid," I responded. "I didn't know what I did, I didn't mean to do it; is Crosby ok."

"He's currently in the hospital, he'll be fine but he won't be in school for the rest of the year."

As if I couldn't feel any guiltier. I may have hated Crosby but I never wanted to injure him so seriously; maybe I did deserve to go to prison.

"So what happens now?" I asked Agent Coulson, knowing fully what the answer was probably going to be.

"Now, you come with us to base, we have too-"

"Wait a minute," said Doris. "You said Jason wasn't in any trouble, so why does he have to go away with you?"

"That's classified information ma'am; just know that you're foster son will be safe and, if all goes accordingly, should be back by Christmas Day."

"But-"

"It's alright Doris," I said. "We should cooperate with him, I'm not in trouble, and I'll be back soon, it's a win, win."

"Jason," Doris said with a very pleading look on her face.

I didn't have the heart to drag this on any further so I reached out and gave her a big hug.

"Just promise me you'll be safe," she said.

"I will be" I said. "I promise i'll be back soon...Mom."

I could tell it made her feel better when I actually called her that. The only thing was I actually meant it. Doris had been there for me at a time when no one else could be. She was always patient with me and made sure I was happy even if I didn't want to be. Rather or not it was biological, Doris was my mother and I was going to call her that from now on. Agent Coulson pressed a button on his wristwatch.

"Area secure, stand down and report back to vehicles," he said.

Outside, I heard a sound that sounded very familiar too guns clicking and being disarmed. I was going to go to my room and get some clothes ready but Agent Coulson told me that would be unnecessary and that I had to go with him now. I grabbed my hoodie, put it on and followed him and his friends outside. Across from my house were at least a dozen black SUV's, Agent Coulson led me to the one in the middle and ushered me inside, he even let me ride shotgun. My mom was looking at me from the porch and I waved bye to her one last time before I set off to parts unknown with Agent Coulson. He said that I wasn't in trouble and that I would be home by Christmas. The weird thing was, I believed him but also got the feeling that I would not exactly be "safe", at least not the way I hoped I would be.


	4. Chapter 4: I Have A Chat With St Nick

Chapter 4: I Have A Chat With St. Nick

We drove for like 2 hours in a direction that I didn't know. We drove so far that at one point we weren't in a city area. All that surrounded us were trees, trees, and (you guessed it) more trees. Suddenly, Agent Coulson took a hard left and we drove on a very rough dirt road for another five minutes before stopping in the middle of a meadow. Agent Coulson and his friends got out of the van so I assumed I could too. I walked around a bit to stretch my legs- which were on the verge of losing all feeling- before rejoining Agent Coulson and the others.

"So now what?" I asked Agent Coulson.

"Now," he said as he pressed another button on his watch. "We look up."

I did as he said and nearly screamed. Floating above our heads was the legendary S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. For those of you that don't know, the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier is basically a navy battleship with four huge turbines attached to it. How a navy battleship could float in mid air, I had no idea. The person who made this work should be rich on the grounds that he or she is a complete technological superpower. Anyway, from the bottom of the helicarrier, a blue tractor beam shot down and lifted the four of us off of the ground and pulled us into the ship (if anyone says I was screaming and cursing on the way up, they are lying).

Once inside, the two black guys went around a corner on the right. and Agent Coulson led me a different way. I had to admit, on the inside the helicarrier was way more impressive. The interior looked like something out of Star Trek. As I walked with Agent Coulson I noticed some really cool things. For example, we passed a huge window that had a squad of agents shooting at a wave of Terminator looking robots. We walked past a few big screen TVs that showed what I assumed to be a simulations of two agents jet fighting, a squad of agents disarming a huge bomb looking device and, a guy with a plasma rifle shooting at glowing moving targets. I'd like to tell you more but if I did, i'd have to kill you (not even joking guys). After walking for like five minutes, Agent Coulson stopped at a metal door, swiped a keycard into a slot which opened the door, and ushered me inside. Then he walked out and the door shut me inside.

I don't know how long I was locked inside; 30 minutes, an hour maybe. However, I did know that I was fed up and I wanted out. I felt on the metal doors and guessed that with a pretty good blast of lightning I could blow them down; all that was left was for me too get charged up. I took a deep breath and began to focus. My powers reacted too my emotions and right now I was very, very, frustrated. I didn't like being restricted, I didn't like being told what to do, and I didn't like being taken away from my mom. I was extremely frustrated and I was going to take it out on that stupid door. My hands started to surge; first small but then as I focused more the surge got bigger until my hands were completely hidden in the voltage. Just as I was about to go all thunder god on the door, some guy said: "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

I turned around with a small scare; I was pretty sure I was the only one in the room. I was wrong; out of the shadow of a corner a black guy wearing a trench coat and an eye patch walked toward me. He had the same calculating look in his (sniker) eye as Agent Coulson did but his expression said something like: _You actually be worth all the trouble it took to bring you here._ We stared each other down for like 10 seconds before we actually said words.

"So," he started. "You're the mutant."

"What did you just call me?" I snapped back.

"A mutant; basically you have an X gene that-"

"I know what a mutant is patchy, but why did you call me that?

"Patchy huh?" The guy chuckled. "Clever, really clever.

"Whatever dude, can I go home now?"

"I think we both know the answer to that question Mr. Fuller."

"But why did I have to come here?" I asked. "Agent Coulson said I wasn't in any trouble so why did you lock me in here?"

"I'll explain all of that later," he said as he pulled a keycard out of his coat. "For now, why don't you get some sleep; this keycard unlocks your room just a little ways away from here."

"What if I refuse?" I asked him. "What if I decide to blow that door down and get off of this ship my own way.

"You're not gonna do that"

"Why?"

"Because that would be a pretty bad way of saying thank you to the man that has kept you out of mutant prison."

My face must have been pretty priceless because I could tell the guy was trying to stifle the laugh building in his throat.

"Oh yeah wasn't expecting that were you?" he asked me. "Boy, you can't just blast people with thunder and not expect the law to get involved."

"But-"

"S.H.I.E.L.D has kept the law off of your back because we need you for a little something; all charges against you will be dropped and you won't spend a second behind bars.

"And all I have to do is play your little game?"

"Well it's not a game but yeah; just cooperate with us for a little while and you'll be free to walk away.

I sighed, either way I didn't have a choice. Compared to life in prison, this guy offered a pretty sweet deal.

"I didn't ask for this," I said. "But now that i'm here what do I do?"

The guy handed me the keycard.

"Walk out of this room, take two right turns and go to the fourth door on your left; that's where you'll be staying for now.

"Ok cool; and tomorrow?"

"Your alarm is set for 7 A.M., you'll have an hour to get dressed, and eat breakfast before meeting in room 135X for training."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, i'm Colonel Nick Fury, commanding officer of S.H.I.E.L.D., welcome to H.Q. now go get some sleep.

I followed Fury's directions and found my room; door number 235J. I slipped my keycard in the slot opened the door and walked inside. My room was actually pretty awesome. It had a bed, two drawers and closets filled with clothes, a flat screen TV propped on the wall, it even had a mini fridge filled with snacks, and a bathroom with a shower and toiletries. On my bed was a watch and a set of PJs. I picked up the watch and looked at the time, 1:35 A.M. That didn't concern me; I was used to staying up late for homework, projects, and video games. I quickly changed into my PJs, brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. You wouldn't believe how quickly I fell asleep but looking back on it, it was a pretty eventful day.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: I Make New Friends, Spar With Superheroes, and Have The Most Dangerous Gym Class Ever**

The next morning two alarms woke me up; the one on my iPod and the one on my watch. Despite the little amount of sleep I got, I still felt energized, like I was plugged up to a generator while I slept. I got up quickly took a shower, brushed my teeth and went to my closets. I picked out a blue T-shirt with the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on it, a black pair of jeans, my regular shoes, and a black jacket which I left unzipped. While I was combing my dreads, I noticed something strange about me. My eyes, that used to be dark brown, were now electric blue. Despite everything that had happened to me yesterday, this was the most shocking of all. It was like a brand, no matter how hard I would try to hide it, now there was a permanent symbol of how different I was. To be honest, I didn't know if I could take much more.

After I was done getting dressed, I walked out of my room and checked the time: 7:30. I had half an hour to eat before boot camp so I asked for directions and quickly made my way down to the cafeteria. Let me tell you something cool. S.H.I.E.L.D. knows how to eat. Their cafeteria had everything you could imagine. All types of pancakes, lots of bacon, every type of cereal, and anything else associated with breakfast. I got blueberry, strawberry, and mango pancakes. Also, a plate full of bacon, some Cinnamon Toast Crunch with strawberry milk, blueberry muffins, strawberry yogurt, and a glass of apple juice. After I got my food, I sat down at an empty table that had a nice view of the sky. I blessed my food but right before I started to eat some guy shouted "Hey you!"

I turned around and saw a guy in a blue football jersey sitting next to a blonde girl wearing a denim hat, and a sleeveless denim jacket with a long sleeve white shirt. Immediately, I was on guard because I did not have pleasant relationships with jocks and the girl looked like the popular type which I did not mingle well with either. However their faces said differently. The guy wearing the football jersey had a humble and friendly look in his eyes. Plus his brown hair was a bit untidy, which was not the usual look for a conceited jock. The girl, though definitely not a stranger to popularity, had a kind and gentle demeanor; plus she looked kind of athletic, like she could play ball really good. Even so, I politely waved hello, and turned around to eat my food.

"If you don't come over here," called the Jersey guy. "We're coming over to you."

I shrugged my shoulders, sure that they were bluffing. I was wrong. They took their food trays and literally flew from their table and landed right across from where I was sitting. The girl actually glew with golden fiery light as she flew and cooled off when she landed.

"Dude, were not gonna bite you," said the Jersey guy. "Hopefully you won't bite us either, my name's Grant, Grant Jackson; it's very nice to meet you.

He reached his hand out and I shook it not wanting to be rude. Either way it looked like these two were here to stay I might as well get used to them.

"Jason Fuller," I responded. "It's good to meet you as well; who is your friend?"

"Allyson Grace," she said quickly reaching out her hand. "I really like your hair."

"Thanks," I said shaking her hand. "So why are you two here?"

"We don't know," said Grant. "Probably for the same reason as you; by the way, what can you do?

"I can shoot lightning out of my hands."

"Is that it?"

"So far, yes."

"That's cool bro; as for me, I can fly, I have super strength, I have a lot of stamina, and as far as I know, I'm invulnerable.

"Awesome," I said feeling a little bit outclassed. "What about you Allyson?"

"Oh me?" she said shyly. "I have the power to absorb an endless amount of solar energy; with this energy I can fly, shoot projectiles, make constructs, and heal any wounds through song."

"Whoah," Grant and I said at the same time. Clearly she was way more in control in terms of power than we were.

"So are the two of you going to training after breakfast?" I asked them.

"Yup," said Grant. "Dude we should probably focus on eating now, we only have 25 minutes before crunch time."

With that, everyone ate more and talked less. If this is what having friends was like then it wasn't so bad. In fact, I was actually starting to like these two.

After breakfast, the two black guys that came to my house showed up to escort the three of us to room 135X. We walked about 5 minutes before actually getting there. Inside, the room resembled that of a high school gym except for the fact that most gyms don't have walls made of metal and lethal weapons racked on the walls. Colonel Fury was inside already waiting for us and I swear it's like he almost smiled at the sight of us. That didn't make me feel any better about what was coming up.

"Welcome children," he said. "We have a lot of training to do and little time to do it so listen and don't ask any questions."

Allyson immediately raised her hand; once a schoolgirl always a schoolgirl.

"Yes miss Grace?" asked Fury.

"Sorry to ask you a question when you told us not to Mr. Fury but who exactly are we training with?

"I'm glad you asked miss Grace and it's Colonel Fury," said Fury. "Today the three of you will receive training by Nightcrawler and Storm of the X-Men; also from Luke Cage and Ms. Marvel."

At first I thought there was no way four well known superheroes were going to bother training three high school kids but sure enough, Fury pressed a button and the four of them appeared in a flash of light. Luke Cage was this big black guy with huge muscles wearing black workout pants and a yellow muscle shirt. Ms, Marvel was a woman with flowing blonde hair wearing jeans a white T-shirt and a crimson leather jacket. Storm was a black woman with silver-grey hair, and white eyes; she was dressed in a black tank top and black workout pants. Finally, Nightcrawler was this guy or sort of guy with blue skin, elf ears, and a demon tail. He was also dressed in a black tank top and workout pants.

At the sight of these heroes, Grant burst into applause while Allyson kept bouncing on the balls of her feet squealing: OMG, OMG, OMG. Me, I just smiled and acted polite. Don't get me wrong I was definitely a little starstruck but like I said, I don't have too much love for heroes.

After the initial hype had settled down, Fury broke us off into groups. For thirty minutes we would spend time with a certain hero, working on different combat aspects then we would switch until everyone had been at the stations Fury had chosen for us. For my first station I would be with Luke Cage and Nightcrawler working on armed and unarmed combat. I shed my jacket, stretched out a little and prepared myself to spar hand-to-hand with one of the world's strongest superheroes. I looked over at Grant and Allyson who were doing the same except they were in midair. I wasn't insecure about much and this was probably stupid but I was starting to feel a bit inferior to my peers. Grant could fly, had super strength, and was almost invincible. Allyson could combust into sunlight, fly, blast stuff, make stuff, and heal people with her most likely beautiful singing. All I could do was shoot lightning out of my hands which was only good for blasting longtime rivals and recharging batteries.

"Yo kid," said Luke. "Get your head out of the clouds and into the fight."

"Oh," I said still shaking off my daydream. "Sorry about that."

"It's cool man just focus on the task at hand."

"Ok, so what are we doing?"

"For fifteen minutes you and I are going to spar hand-to-hand, you can use your lightning powers for melee purposes but you can't blast me from a distance."

"That is so not fair dude, I don't have super strength."

"I can't blast lightning out of my hands; your enemy won't care about what's fair so just shut up and fight."

I took a deep breath and concentrated on one emotion: anger. Anger was easy, anger was all i've ever known since I was seven, and now I was going to take out some of my anger on Luke Cage's face. My fists surged with voltage in fact I couldn't even see my hands anymore, I was generating that much lightning. Luke took this as a sign to attack. He rushed at me and swung with a right hook that a dodged by ducking. He kicked at me while I was down but I rolled backwards, getting out of range of his fists and then rushing to counter attack. Luke did the same and charged at me; right before we collided, I jumped over him, turned in mid air and kicked him in the back. It probably didn't hurt him very much but at least I managed to land a blow. Again, Luke charged at me but this time I was ready. I trotted backwards until Luke lunged to tackle me; then, I did a backwards cartwheel that would end up with my feet planting themselves in Luke's chin. Right before impact I thought how awesome it would be if my feet could catch lightning. BOOM! Luke caught a lightning kick under his chin and crash landed a few feet away. As he was getting up I jumped on his back, hoping to keep him off balance and continue pounding him. Worst. Idea. Ever. Luke grabbed the back of my shirt and threw me halfway across the room. Quicker than I could have ever anticipated, he caught up to me and assaulted me with punches to the chest and face before grabbing me and throwing me again. At this point everything hurt but I knew I couldn't stay on the ground for too long, Luke would be on my butt but any second. I quickly got up to the sight of Luke charging at me and made an attempt to dodge. Unfortunately, Luke saw this coming. He feinted an attempt to tackle me and when I moved he actually tackled me; I can still feel the impact my head made on the floor. Through the blurry haze of my vision I saw Luke raise a fist and I quickly moved my head out of the way before it came crashing down. Next I grabbed Luke's face who quickly got off of me due to the fact that I had just super-charged his face with voltage. I quickly got up to face Luke, ignoring my aching body pains, but this time something was different; Luke was throwing a punch but it was like he was moving slower, much slower. At first I thought he was just messing with me but when I looked around it was the same. Grant and Ms. Marvel who were locked in aerial combat were punching each other at the speed of snails. Allyson and Storm who were blasting each other were also moving slow; in fact Storm's lightning bolts looked as though they were being frozen. I didn't know what was going on so I decided to test it out. I moved closer to Luke, who was still on the verge of punching me, and poked him in the chest. It was if he didn't feel it or see that I was now in butt-kicking distance. I avoided his fist and walked around him; he very slowly turned around with a confused look on his face. At this point I decided to put him out of his slo-mo misery. I focused more lightning energy on my fists and punched Luke as many times as I could in the face, chest, and torso, dodging and countering his attacks with laughable ease. Finally, I backflipped lightning kicked him in the face, (I didn't know I could do that) landed and power kicked him in the chest sending him flying backwards. To add insult to injury, while he was still falling, which was also going in slow motion, I got a running start and flying kicked him the the chest with more speed and power than I ever knew I had. I must have really put myself into that one because Luke flew straight into a wall at above normal speed and we were in the middle of the gym.

"Nice moves kid," said Luke as he slowly got up. "Why didn't you say you had super-speed powers.

"Because I don't," I said really confused like.

"Yeah you do, for the last few seconds of that fight I couldn't touch you; I could hardly see you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Take a look," he said pulling an iPod like device out of his pocket.

He pressed some kind of app, messed around with the device until it shot out a holographic screen replaying the fight. Not to toot my own horn but, looking at myself from a distance, I was pretty impressive. I watched the fight with Luke up until the moment where he went super slo-mo. Instead I saw me, or I assume it was me, beating the living crap out of Luke in less than five seconds. Even more surprising was the blurry image of me kicking Luke while in midair except a bolt of lightning was coming out of my foot.

"Whoa," I said.

"Yeah," said Luke.

"Sorry about that last kick"

"It's ok, i've been hit much harder but it's obvious there is more to you than just lightning.

"Cool,"

"Very much, now get ready we still have 10 more minutes of sparring to do."

From then on out the match wasn't too much of a contest. I found out that making my super speed work was to build up momentum like a jet on a runway. For ten straight minutes, Luke was subject to an unending flurry of thunder powered kicks and punches until it was time for my lesson with Nightcrawler.

To start off, Nightcrawler directed me to a wall that had various types of swords on it and instructed me to choose one. I chose a leaf shaped blade (not literally, just think of the sword Percy Jackson uses) with a curved hilt that would be good for locking an opponent's blade while Nightcrawler chose a blade that looked like it was used in George Washington's day. Next, The two of us stretched out for a minute so I could rub off my soreness from my match with Luke. While we were stretching I took a look at how Grant and Allyson were doing. Grant was still fighting Ms. Marvel in midar, holding his own; the two fought with so much strength, power, and speed that it reminded me of a battle I saw on Dragon Ball Z. Allyson on the other hand was doing much better. She was gracefully moving through the air like a pro assaulting Storm with blasts of sun, blocking attacks with sun shaped shields, and hitting storm with various constructs like a sledgehammer, a giant fist, even a lightning bolt made of sun energy. If this was the start of a new superhero team, (hint hint) Allyson was definitely going to be the leader.

After we were done stretching, Nightcrawler and I got into our respective defensive stances ready to duel. Now I know what you're probably thinking but i've watched a lot of sword fighting movies plus a lot of sword fighting technique vids on YouTube by people who study the art so I was more prepared for this fight than you think I am. I charged at Nightcrawler with a war cry and brought my blade down hard in a vertical slice. Nightcrawler simply backflipped, kicking me in the chin and while in midair, kicked me in the chest sending me tumbling backwards. Luckily, I was able to hold on to my blade because blue boy wasn't done yet. He rushed at me and quickly jabbed and thrusted at me a numerous amount of times. If it wasn't for my quick reflexes I probably would've been skewered on the third jab. Even so, I was just barely holding my own, it was all I could do to block and dodge this guy's sword. The next 10 minutes went by in a flurry of stabs, cuts, blocks, counters, and parrys. Nightcrawler and I went back and forth (mostly back on my part) trying to finish the fight. Even though I could tell Nightcrawler was taking it easy on me, I had no intention of being swept aside like a training doll. Yet, everything I tried had failed. When I tried for a stab, Nightcrawler dodged and countered. If I tried for a slash, Nightcrawler would either parry, dodge and attack my torso area, or dodge and attack my legs. Again, only my reflexes were keeping me in the game. Finally, with five minutes left before the end of the match I made my move. I tapped into the momentum I had built up over the course of the fight and unleashed it to travel faster (I'm gonna start calling it Speed Mode; sounds cooler). I was not traveling as fast as I was when I was pummeling Luke but it was enough to give me a decent edge. I slashed, stabbed, and even used my legs to push Nightcrawler on the defensive while I attacked at what few openings he left me. Even with my speed Nightcrawler was clearly the better swordsman; dodging and blocking even my best attacks and maneuvers. However, he didn't have lightning powers, and I was going to exploit that weakness. Nightcrawler downward slashed at me which I blocked with my sword. Next, I pushed the blade up and kicked him as hard as I could in the chest sending him tumbling backwards. Finally, I charged at him and spun around before slashing at him. This was a risky move because a fighter should never turn his back to his opponent. Plus the whole sword spin attack you see on TV is not as effective in real life as you think it is; the only reason I risked such a move was because I had the speed to pull it off. Anyway, while my back was turned, I charged my blade with lightning and when Nightcrawler blocked my attack like I knew he would, his blade shattered like ice. Nightcrawler was clearly surprised by my trick and as he was staggering backwards, I rushed in and attempted to stab him. However, right before the blade made impact, he vanished in a puff of blue smoke. Suddenly, I felt a lot of weight on my back but before I could counter, everything went dark and when the lights came back, I was free falling to the floor. I crashed hard and before I could get up, I felt the tip of a sword at my neck. I was so stupid; I had completely forgot he had teleportation powers. Nightcrawler helped me to my feet and congratulated my efforts with a huge grin. Which by the way is kind of unnerving with the yellow eyes, blue skin, and fangs.

"Good job Jason," he said.

"Not good enough," I said. "You still beat me."

"Don't beat yourself up mein friend, that was very good for a first try, we'll have many more sessions so you will improve."

"Ok cool, thanks for the awesome match, I had a lot of fun"

I shook Nightcrawler's hand (which felt weird considering he only had three fingers) and moved on to my next station with Ms. Marvel. Because Allyson had put the smackdown on Storm, who was completely exhausted, Grant and Allyson would both be at the station I was at, alternating between Luke and Nightcrawler. In the meantime, I would be working with Ms. Marvel on ground level ranged fighting. Basically, this meant for one hour was going to get blasted around the gym while trying to figure out how to access my inner Zeus.

"Ready kid?" she asked me.

"No, not really," I responded.

"Too bad,"

Quicker than I could react, Ms. Marvel shoot at me with a photon blast. Now you'd probably think that i'd dodge this due to my super speed and quick reflexes but the truth was, I wasn't ready and I covered my face with my arms (like that would help) and fumbled backwards in a really heroic manner. Lucky for me, my powers activated on time to save my sorry butt. Right before the blast connected, I felt a bump, as if the blast had hit something that wasn't me. I lowered my arms to find, to my surprise and delight, that a force field of electric energy had saved me from being a splat on the wall. Ms. Marvel was still blasting away at the barrier however, it was still standing strong. On a hunch I balled my right hand into a fist and struck the barrier. The result was an electrical shock wave that blew Ms. Marvel (and everyone else) off of their feet. Ms Marvel, though blown off her feet, simply rolled, got on her feet again and resumed the attack.

For the first few minutes of the fight Ms Marvel was in charge, This wasn't because she was stronger, quicker, or more experienced than me; (although all of these were true) it was because my attacks were too slow. For example, when Ms. Marvel got up, she blasted me with a volley of photon blasts. I dodged them all and willed a bolt of lightning to shoot out of my right hands. She dodged this too and blasted another turret of photon blasts at me. This time, instead of dodging, I willed both of my hands to release a crazy amount of voltage that i focused into a mega lightning bolt. The bolt blasted right through Ms. Marvel's volley attack and pelted her right in the chest (I assume it was the chest, everything went bright when the bolt made impact, I couldn't see her much). Surprisingly, she quickly got up and resumed her relentless photon blast attack. This time, Ms Marvel saw right through my tactics and broke them down. When I blasted her with a lightning bolt she dodged and threw like ten or twenty blasts at me; I was forced to resort to dodging and rarely attacking. It went on like this for a while: I blast, she dodges, she shoots, I run. To make matters worse, Ms. Marvel decided to blast at me from the air (cheating if you consider the fact that we were practicing ground ranged battling). Now, she had more room to maneuver, more speed to work with, and I had less chances to dodge and even if I did, from such a good vantage point, Ms. Marvel could predict where I would be and strike. At one point she had me pinned down and I had to create another barrier to avoid being bombarded. However, this time Ms. Marvel was serious. She created a super charged photon blast, about the size of a jumbo beach ball and hurled it at me. The blast crushed my force field on impact and sent me flying backwards into the wall. Although, the force of the blast broke through my barrier, the initial impact didn't hurt too badly so I was able to roll out of the way before any more of Ms. Marvel's blasts did anymore damage to me. However, I was still at the same place I was when the fight started. Ms. Marvel in the air and on the attack while I was on the ground scrambling around for dear life. I couldn't hit her while she was up there, I knew that for certain. I wished there was a way to bring her down; for a brief moment, I imagined lightning striking her in the back. CRAKK! Suddenly, Ms. Marvel plummeted to the floor after a thundercloud suddenly materialized and struck her with lightning. It was in that moment that I decided to get a bit more creative with my powers and really see what I could do.

For the next 50 minutes, I fought like a beast. After I realized my powers could do more than just straight lightning bolts, I decided to experiment further. For starters, instead of shooting straight and focused bolts of lightning, I willed my lightning into turn into balls that I blasted at Ms. Marvel. This made a tremendous difference in the fight because now I could attack as well as defend more effectively. For example, one time Ms. Marvel blasted another volley of photon blasts at me. I saw this coming and used a bolt of lightning to blast through her volley; although she did dodge the impact of the bolt. However, I expected this and unleashed my own volley of lightning blasts at Ms. Marvel, about ten in total. Every blast made impact and sent her tumbling, not soaring backwards. I kept at it, knowing that if I held back for a second, Ms Marvel would capitalize and for, a while we went on matching each other blast for blast although I did get a few good hits in. For example, after we had reached 45 minutes of straight fighting I figured out how to use my speed powers to make my blasts move faster and hit harder. This technique worked by me concentrating my speed powers solely in my hands and resonating into my blasts. By doing this I could fire like 20 individual shots in 2 seconds. Also, instead of merely blunt impact, I willed my blasts to explode on impact; this helped keep Ms. Marvel off balance and give me an advantage. Finally, after a long and brutal battle and with only 10 minutes left in the fight I decided to try and end it early. Don't get me wrong, I still had fuel to burn but I could tell Ms. Marvel was up to something, this fight was a bit too easy for my liking; better to end it now on my terms than wait for her to pull out her ace. I lured Ms. Marvel into a false sense of security by keeping up our game of blaster cat and mouse; then while she was off guard, I tapped into my Speed Mode, making her and everything else in the world seem frozen. While in the Speed Mode I weaved through the photon blasts and absorbed all of the electrical blasts that were also in midair. With this energy I slapped the ground with both of my hands, creating surge that traveled across the floor to where Ms. Marvel was standing. A new thing I had learned at that moment was that while using my lightning powers it would deteriorate how much I could tap into Speed Mode; even now Ms. Marvel was slowly starting to move again. I knew I didn't have long so I quickly pulled out my ace. I created a thunderbolt, yes an actual thunderbolt like the one Zeus would use. I charged up the thunderbolt with a ton of voltage and hurled it at Ms. Marvel. The blast itself was so powerful that it knocked everyone off off their feet and threw them at various directions, including myself. The good news was that everyone was ok although my friends and the other heroes were starting to give me dirty looks. The bad news was that everyone was ok including Ms. Marvel who dusted off her clothes (what were those things made of, they could survive an atomic bomb) and started to glow.

When I say she started to glow, I mean she would give Allyson, the sun queen, a run for her money. The energy I felt radiating off of her was incredible, scary in fact but what was even more frightening was what she did next. She screamed a crazy amazon like battle cry and blasted me with enough energy to blast through at least 10 walls. In that instant time froze without me even needing to tap into Speed Mode; maybe it was a reflex or maybe, in the moment of certain death, my body decided to start the habit of freezing time. What I did next was so impulsive and so dangerous that I should have been on the top 10 list for most troubled mutant kids on the planet. I immediately felt a huge surge of energy generating from my body, where all this power came from I didn't know but I did know I had to release it at that moment or else it would explode inside me which would not be a good way to kick off the holidays. I willed the immense energy to transfer through my arms which felt both exhilarating and excruciating. The energy output was unbelieveable, I literally was lost in the voltage I couldn't see my hands, arms, or even my body, it was a miracle I could make out Ms. Marvel's image so that I could aim properly. I placed my hands together, focused all of my energy on deadly energy blast and let it rip. (for those of you that don't know that move is called Final Flash by Vegeta, a character on Dragonball Z, look it up it's a good show) the two energy blasts, mine and Ms. Marvel's, collided with each other in a deadly intense power battle. I could feel that even with all this power I would still lose if I did not dig deeper so thats what I did. I looked inside myself and willed all of the energy I had, even my Speed Mode Momentum, to assist my Final Flash and help me end this fight. You would not believe how fast the response was. Immediately, my blast quadrupled in size and strength, plus, with my Speed Mode momentum pushing it on, the blast completely steamrolled Ms. Marvel's and crashed into her. On impact, the blast propelled Ms. Marvel into the steel wall, also causing a major electrical surge throughout the entire complex setting everything electrical powered or metal based on a power frenzy. Finally, after 5 seconds of impact, my energy blast dissipated and I actually got to survey the damage. The most shocking thing was how powerful the blast really was and how it affected my opponent. Ms. Marvel was shot through not one, not two, but 10 steel walls. At first I was worried that I had killed her but she briefly got up before fainting and crashing to the floor again so at least I had confirmation that she was sort of ok. The next thing I realized was that I was spent, I had no energy left in my body and I crumpled to the ground.

Through the haze of my blurry vision I saw the silhouettes of Grant and Allyson rushing towards me. A few seconds later I felt Grant slowly pick me up (not bridal style) and put my right arm around his shoulder in an attempt to keep me upright.

"DUDE!" he shouted. "THAT WAS FREAKIN EPIC, YOU DESTROYED HER!"

"uhhruugglahhhr," I responded which was extremley exhausted for: Thanks, now please stop screaming in my ear and give me a ton of red bull.

"Grant," said Allyson. "Stop screaming in his ear and let me help him. (I was really starting to like this girl)

"Ok what do you need me to do."

"Set him down on the floor- NO DON'T DROP HIM!"

Apparently, "set him down on the floor" meant drop you're new friend flat on his face to Grant, I made a mental note to zap him as soon as I had the energy for it. After I was put on the ground with such gentle care, Allyson knelt down, re positioned me so I was in a more comfortable state, and then began to gently touch my chest, arms, hands, and face. (her hands were really soft) Then, she hovered her hands over my chest and began to sing. Her voice was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my life, like an entire choir of angels singing through one person. As she sung, my body willed with a sudden warmth, like the kind you get when you walk outside after being locked in a cold classroom for two hours. To be honest I felt as though my body was glowing and maybe it was, Allyson did have sun powers after all. After she stopped singing I felt….better. I didn't feel completely re-energized but it was good enough for me to sit up straight and form clear words.

"So how do you feel buddy?" Grant asked me. "You still don't look so good."

"Maybe because you dropped me on my face you bonehead," I snapped.

"Oh, sorry about that man I didn't think."

I was gonna say something like "no, you didn't" but Grant had such an "i'm sorry" look on his face that I couldn't stay mad at him. The guy was a moron but he was still a good guy.

"It's ok bro," I said. "Just don't ever do it again or i'll zap you."

We both laughed for a little while.

"But seriously," said Allyson who still had a concerned look in her eyes. "How are you feeling, are you completely re-energized; you don't look like it."

"Well," I started. "I'm not completely re-energized…..BUT you still did a very good job," I quickly added because Allyson looked like she was on the verge of tears.

"But, my healing songs always work. On me, other people, even Grant."

I looked at Grant with a quizzical look on my face.

"Oh," he started. "After I fought Ms. Marvel and Luke Cage I was bone tired dude, I fought with everything I had, so Allyson did her magic song healy thing on me and all my energy came back, I felt stronger than ever."

"So why doesn't it work on you?" Allyson asked me.

"I dunno," I said. "Try it again, I did release a huge amount of energy, maybe I need another dose of sun energy."

"No," said Allyson flatly. "It never takes more than one song to heal anyone, it can literally bring them back from the brink of death and heal up the most gruesome of all cuts and gashes."

She said this with so much certainty that I could tell she spoke from experience; somewhere out there, a lot of people owed Allyson their lives.

"Besides, I can sense that you're body has had too much exposure to my sun energy, any more and you'd burn up, literally."

"Really?" I asked.

"Well either that, or you'd get cancer so severe you'd die within two hours,"

How she knew that, I didn't wanna know but it was clear I wasn't getting anymore sun healing.

"Maybe he needs a different type of recharge," said Grant. "Maybe the electrical kind."

He looked in the direction where I blasted Ms. Marvel through 10 walls, sure enough there was a power cable surging with power.

"Electrical huh?" I said to myself.

I got up and walked towards the power cable, ignoring Allyson's frantic cries to stop me. Once I got there, I steeled my nerves knowing that either this would work, or I would be committing suicide. Before I could talk myself out of it I grabbed the cable. Imagine drinking a gallon made of: Red Bull, Monster, espresso, and the most caffeinated sugary mixed coffee imaginable. The rush of power I felt was 10 times the rush, energy, and power. I felt all of my energy return and then some; I felt like I could run around the world, fight forever, and take on an army in one day without ever tiring. I quite literally leaped 10 feet in the air and landed perfectly on my feet; running back to Allyson and Grant, grinning like a madman.

Because we finished this part of our training ahead of schedule, and because my Final Flash caused a few technical problems with the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s training rooms, Fury gave us 30 minutes to rest up before moving on to our next exercise. (not that any of us actually needed any rest). We used this time to talk and get to know each other better. Since none of us wanted to sit on the floor for thirty minutes we decided to have our conversation in the air. Grant and Allyson were hovering in the air sitting criss cross applesauce (sorry, force of habit) and Allyson made me a sofa made of sun energy, hovering across from her, to sit on which by the way, felt so nice and warm it was perfect for taking naps. For like ten minutes we talked about basic stuff like: where we were from, what we liked to do for fun, favorite sports, music, books, etc. As it turned out, we all had a lot in common. We all share the same love of: WWE wrestling, extreme sports, rock music, and roller coasters. We all talked about how we got our powers and when. I told my story first, making sure to go in detail about my epic dodgeball comeback and I tried to make my incident with Crosby sound less horrific than it actually was. Grant was really chill about it, even said Crosby got what he deserved. Allyson on the other hand was somewhat horrified that I could do that to someone; she put her hands over her mouth and had a really shocked look on her face, I tried not to feel overly bad about that. Grant as it turns out developed his powers a few hours after I did. He was at football practice somewhere in Nebraska and made football history when he trucked a quarterback and sent them both flying from the 10 yard line to the opposing End Zone in one leap. I didn't think Grant could take a lot of things seriously but as he told his story, his expression turned stony and he told the story as if it were a bitter memory. I got the feeling that back at home, there was an open position on Grant's football team. Allyson on the other hand, developed her powers for a little over a year ago. She was singing at her Christmas play back at her hometown in Alabama when she suddenly began to glow in the middle her solo as a christmas angel. Because it was a Christmas play and she was playing the part as an angel, the crowd thought it was all a part of the play and Allyson wasn't exposed as a mutant. For a year, Allyson, with the help of her parents, learned how to use her powers and effectively hide them in public (no wonder she was such a pro, she had a head start). That surprised me because most parents would be mortified to learn that they had a mutant child but Allyson's parents accepted it, helped her master it, and by the sounds of it, were happy she was a mutant. We talked about this stuff and more until our thirty minutes were up and we had to go to room 134X for our next assignment. Thinking back on it, I realized that was the first time I had ever hung out with friends.

Once inside room 134X, which was almost the same as 135X but much bigger, and with no weapons racked on the walls, Fury and the other heroes walked into some kind of both that had a dark window shielding them so I could not see in at all.

"Ok kids," said Fury (when was he gonna stop calling us kids). "This will be your first test to see how you do as a team and it starts right now.

An alarm suddenly went off and quicker than I could blink a million lights flashed. When they dissipated, we found ourselves surrounded by the same Terminator looking robots that I saw last night; the only difference was there was only three of us, there were at least 500 of them. Some of them were smallish and skeleton like but I could tell they were much stronger than they looked. Others were much more intimidating with huge bodies with a muscular build (assuming robots can have muscle) and laser cannons on their arms, and shoulders. We were way outnumbered but maybe not outgunned; before I could get a plan together however, Grant charged forward with a yell, crashing through a dozen robots and went smashing away. I knew robots couldn't feel or display emotion but one of them looked at Grant, looked back at me, and I may have been imagining it but his face said something like: "_Is your friend nuts?" _I did the only thing I could do; thought to myself: "_Yes he is", _and blasted the robots head off with a bolt of lightning.

For like 5 minutes the entire fight was chaos. Allyson and I managed to stay together for a while, blasting down robots with sun blasts and lightning bolts but eventually, we became separated due to the rush of robots. I didn't like this. With Grant all on his own, doing his own thing, Allyson and I were already at a disadvantage but now we were all on our own and it was only a matter until the divided became the conquered. For a while though I was doing well on my own. I blasted through like 20 runts with bolts of lightning and when they were getting closer I switched to blasts which proved to be just as effective for making scrap metal. Just when I thought maybe I could turn this around, get back to Allyson, and then make our way to Grant, I met my first giant robot (I'll call them titans from now on). He looked at me and his eyes flashed like a car blinker on alarm mode. After that all of the runts backed up, refrained from attacking me, and formed a circle around the two of us. I knew what was going down, i'd been in plenty of these situations, the big guy wanted to fight me one on one, he wanted to make an example out of me. I started the flight by blasting him in the chest with a huge lightning bolt. The blast hit him considerably and caused him to stumble backwards but it didn't damage him as much as I had hoped. Plan B, I made my hands surge with voltage and tried pounding him with my fists. Yeah, that didn't work out too well. For starters, metal is much tougher to damage with your fists than flesh, even with voltage fists. My hand didn't break, thank God, but the Titan grabbed me by the neck and lifted me off of the ground. He raised a fist and I knew what was coming next; so before I said goodbye to my face, I blasted him in the face with another lightning bolt. I must have been pretty desperate for him to let go because this time the titan actually crashed into his buddies, taking out maybe a good 10 or 15 for me. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough of a blast to trash the titan and he got up and charged me. I charged back and right before collision, (or should I say trample) I baseball slid between his legs, tapped into my Speed Mode, and while the titan was going slo mo, I jumped on his back, grabbed his neck and released a major electrical surge that traveled through his body (mostly his insides where all of his wiring probably was) making him go into a crazy seizure like state. Yet that still wasn't enough to put him out of commision because he grabbed me and threw me off of his back (how many people were gonna throw me off of their back today). Fortunately, he must have been severely weakened because I only hit the floor with minor force and I didn't get thrown very far. The only downside was that apparently, the titan had had enough (he knew he was losing) and the runts began to join the fight. I didn't have a lot of Speed Mode left in me but I did have enough to make them slow down for a while. While in Speed Mode, I created a Thunderbolt, supercharged it and used it to slice the Titan, who was already in bad shape, in half. Before I could attack any of the other robots, I heard Grant make a "YAAAAHHH!" sound, followed by the sound of metal being pounded. I looked up and saw a damaged titan falling towards me. Naturally, I threw my thunderbolt at it, causing it explode into scrap that harmlessly rained down in all directions.

Afterwards, I quickly created another super charged thunderbolt and went hacking away at my enemies. Even without my super speed I was pretty quick on my feet. Plus, with the help of Nightcrawler, my skills with armed combat greatly improved, especially when I was armed with lightning and my enemies were unarmed. I did a 180 and slashed through 20 runts as if they were butter. Then I turned around to face the surge of enemies heading my way. Before they could reach me, I swung my thunderbolt and imagined a shock wave mowing them all down. It worked. The few that remained rushed at me but were quickly cut down, although I had a new surge of about 50 to deal with. They came at me and I slashed them down as they came in range, taking about 30 of them out before the had me backed up against a wall. Unfortunately for them, I anticipated this. As soon as my back touched the wall I unleashed a mega blast of lightning that came out of my chest (I was thinking about Iron Man's unibeam blast at the time) taking down the other 20 and giving me some room to think. I could hear Grant tearing away at other robots but he was too far away and in way too deep for me to try and regroup with. Allyson on the other hand was a lot closer to me and from the looks of it she was doing pretty good. I caught sight of runts being blasted to bits by sun blasts, runts being scattered by the swing of a giant sun hammer, plus Allyson hovered in midair, using a giant fist to clobber what I can only assume was either a titan or a major pack of runts. Anyway, she was a lot closer and there wasn't too much blockage around her so I ran in her direction. Needless to say, I was met with resistance from all ends. There were runts coming at me left and right, front and back. What I did to get them off of me was I created a giant electrical explosive wave that destroyed a lot of my aggressors and blew away many more. Then I created a thunderbolt to hack down more as I went but when I looked outwards, I realized that I would not get far even with a thunderbolt if it was only 3 feet long. So, in mid swing of another wave of runts, I willed my thunderbolt to become much larger, about the size of a spear. The result was a clattered heap of robots who didn't see it coming. I mowed down runts as quickly as the stepped up, taking 5-10 of them with one swing. The thunder spear was also good for helping me keep the robots from surrounding me. For example, just when I was about to reach Allyson, I felt that I was getting overwhelmed again by the runts. I took the thunder spear by the lower end and swung around in a circle two times. I don't know how many I cut through but I knew it had to be around 30, suddenly I didn't feel overwhelmed any more. The thunder spear was also good for dealing with titans which was good considering the fact that one just happened to be charging at me from my left side.

I didn't even need to go into Speed Mode to handle this one. I charged at him, grabbing my thunder spear by the middle, and slid through his legs right before impact. The spear cut clean through his legs, turning him handicap. I quickly got up, careful not to cut myself with my own weapon, and cut clean through his torso. I was feeling pretty proud of myself but that was quickly brought to a halt when I heard Allyson scream.

I looked over to see that she was backed up against the wall, being held in place by a dogpile of runts but that wasn't the scary part. There was a titan that had all of his lasers trained on her. I didn't know if the lasers would kill but I was certain they wouldn't be a pleasant experience. Yet I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't blast him or the dogpile, with that much metal in such close vicinity, I might accidently fry Allyson. I could have went into speed mode and cut the titan down but he was already on the verge of blasting, I wouldn't be able to stop it from shooting even if I did cut it in half. I wished there was some way the blast wouldn't hit Allyson, for a brief moment I imagined a shield protecting her. When the titan fired, everyone, especially me, was surprised when a medieval shield made of lightning got in the way of the titan's blast, causing him to be severely damaged and tumble backwards. I didn't waste another second I went into Speed Mode and charged the remains of the titan. At this point I didn't doubt the capabilities of my powers. So far I could: blast lightning, reshape it, wield it, and make shields with it. Why not a sword? I swiftly closed the distance between the two of us and leaped into the air. While in mid air, I raised my arms as if I was holding something, and imagined a huge wicked looking medieval sword being brought down to cleave the titan in two. As I came down that's exactly what happened a sword made of lightning formed in between my hands and sliced the titan right down the middle. I turned around to check on Allyson and as it turns out she had everything under control. Before I even made an action to help, she shook off her aggressors with a huge explosive wave of sun energy, turning them all into scrap. I quickly ran to her to make sure she was alright.

"You ok?" I asked her.

"Yeah i'm fine," she said. "But Grant won't be, he's wearing down, look.

I turned around to where Grant was still fighting his heart out. Allyson was right, Grant was strong and he was doing surprisingly well for someone who was fighting alone but he was slowing down and he was getting surrounded. As if on cue, a titan knocked him down and started to blast him with his laser cannons, three more joined in on the shooting; it was all I could do not to charge in myself.

"GRANT!" screamed Allyson.

"It's ok," I said frantically thinking up a plan. "We'll save him we just have to-"

"WATCH OUT!" Allyson screamed as she put up a force field to guard us from three titans who had already begun to fire at us.

The barrier held, but the force of the impact knocked me forward a few feet. But in those few seconds, I had already formulated a plan to get us out of this tight spot, save Grant, and trash the rest of these robots.

"So whats the plan?" Allyson asked me.

"What?" I responded.

"You look like you have a plan and right now i'm all ears so what is it?"

"Make another explosive wave, a bigger one, it'll damage the titans enough to get them off of our backs, after that leave them to me and start blasting the runts and titans in Grant's direction, i'll fill you both in on the rest of the plan once were inside another barrier; are you ready?"

In response, Allyson made the biggest explosive wave i'd ever seen, knocking away the titans (amazing how fast she caught on to my lingo) and destroying many surrounding runts. Then she took to the air and started blasting sun energy at the surrounding robots that were pounding Grant. Her sun blasts were even exploding on impact to do more damage; how good was she?

As for me, I went into Speed Mode, quickly cut down the remains of the titans and then threw my sword in the air, willed it to grow 10 feet long, and then supercharged it. After that was done I willed the sword to fly diagonally right, where a lot of robots where. The blade cut through all of them as if they weren't there, the destruction toll had to be at least 50, not counting the ones who were destroyed during the aftermath of the explosions. With a lot of our surrounding enemies in shambles, I helped Allyson, who was still blasting away, frantically trying to save Grant. I took about a minute but our combined efforts in blasting down the robots proved successful when we finally got in range of the titans who were still blasting away at Grant; God I hoped he was ok. Once in range, I went into Speed Mode again and cut down the four titans with a thunder sword in less than 1 second. After that, Allyson quickly put up a sun barrier and I checked to see if Grant was ok. To be honest you'd expect he'd have a lot of bumps and bruises probably burnt skin and bleeding gashes. Yet except for the fact that his jersey and jeans were badly shredded (thank god his undies were mostly undamaged) he was fine, didn't have a scratch on him, although he was barely conscious.

"He's fine," I said to Allyson. "But he's in no condition to fight.

"I can take care of that," said Allyson

"By singing? I thought people couldn't handle more than one."

"Grant has a much higher tolerance level, he'll be fine.

"Ok then, do your thing, do you need me to take over barrier duty until you're done?

"Nah, I'm good at multitasking, just be ready to fill us in on the rest of that plan when he comes to.

Allyson began to sing (so people DO glow when she heals them, cool) and after about 10 seconds Grant was back on his feet.

"You alright man," I asked him.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah i'm thanks for saving me you two I was in serious trouble there."

"WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT THAT NEXT TIME YOU WANNA GO ALL GUNG HO AND LEAP TO YOUR DEATH YOU STUPID BOY!" Allyson screamed at the top her lungs which was pretty terrifying considering the fact that she was still glowing like a sun goddess.

Then she did the unthinkable and gave Grant a big hug. (apparently her sun form does not burn other people, good to know)

"Almost scared me to death," she barely whispered. "Never do that again, promise me."

"I won't," said Grant. "I promise."

I cleared my throat, loudly.

"Uhh guys, not to be a third wheel here, but were still in the middle of a war zone so how about a little less cuddling and a little more killing please?"

Grant and Allyson both turned bright red and quickly let go of each other.

"Alright here's what we're gonna do," I started. "Allyson, make another explosive wave, as big as you can possibly make without blowing the helicarrier to bits, i'll release another wave following your's, that'll destroy a lot of the remaining resistance. After that you take to the air and blast anything on the far reaches of the room in all directions. Grant, you stay on the inside, smash anything within reach and try not to get get blasted again. As for me, I'll be using my super speed to take out robots in mid section between both of you're zones, If the enemies start to pile up, i'll rush in to help wherever i'm needed. Is everyone good with that plan?

"Yup," said Allyson.

"Let's do it," said Grant.

"Alrighty then," I said. "Allyson, whenever you're ready."

Allyson yelled at the top of her lungs and thrust her hands out. Immediately an explosive wave was unleashed on a bunch of poor robots. I quickly crossed my hands over my chest like a mummy, yelled at the top of my lungs, and unleashed my own explosive wave (no, that was not necessary but it looked a lot cooler on the recording) taking out even more robots. In total there were only about 200 of them left (yeah I know, "_What do you mean ONLY 200"). _It was time to go to work. I took off into a zone in the middle of Grant and Allyson's designated sections, created a thunder sword, and began to run around killing as many robots as I could. Now, although I was going really fast, I wasn't going as fast as I could. What I mean by that is I had very little Speed Mode Momentum left so although I was outstripping my opponents easily, everything was only slightly slower around me so I still had to be careful. While I was busy hacking down enemies, I caught a few glimpses at Grant and Allyson doing their share of the plan. Allyson was blasting away at the outer areas, keeping a lot of robots out of my zone. Everytime I saw a group of robots meet their fiery end, I knew Allyson was looking out for me. Grant was fighting like a madman on the inside zone, Call me crazy but I don't think he liked being blasted with lasers. He fought with such anger and intensity I wasn't ashamed to admit I was a little afraid of him at the time. For example, he quickly smashed down 10 runts with his bare hands and then, when a titan crossed his path, he tackled it, launched it into the air, and grabbed it by it's feet. Then he smashed the titan to the ground so hard most of it shattered on impact. Grant then used the remains of the titan as a club to smash on other robots. Also, I realized that I was getting too slow with my strikes. I had to run in and help out Grant a few times because robots in my section were overflowing into his. After that, I switched from the thunder sword and created thunder claws (yes, like Wolverine's but way longer) to improve my striking speed, it really made the difference when it came to border patrol. With our combined efforts, we managed to sweep up the rest of the robots in under three minutes. Unfortunately, our battle was not yet done.

The roof of the room opened up and out dropped three giant, as in 20 feet tall, robots with huge laser cannons and wicked sharp hands talons. These had to be at least 10x the strength and power of the titans and i'll just call them giants; it's self explanatory.

To start the fight off, the three giants trained their lasers on the three of us and fired. Allyson and I put up barriers to keep the lasers from hitting but even with our combined might we wouldn't be able to hold the barrier for long. I had to think up a plan, fast.

"Allyson," I said in a strained voice.

"Yeah?" she asked me in a voice just above a whisper.

"On the count of three we release another wave together, that should take out their cannons. Grant afterwards you take out the one on the far left; crash it, smash it, thrash it, do whatever you have to just take it out.

"Gotcha," he said in an almost annoying burden free voice.

"Allyson, same to you, make a giant sword out of your sun energy, slash at the robot's legs and arms on the far right, then smash it to bits with a big hammer."

"Alright, but what are you gonna do?" she asked me.

The truth was that I didn't know, I was running on empty and I had no idea how to fight a giant without my final flash move.

"Don't worry I have a plan." I lied. "Now 3,2,1, NOW!

"Allyson and I blasted together (wow, that so did not come out rig- crap did it again-oh never mind you get it) in an intense blast wave of sun and thunder. The good news was that The blast wave did indeed take out the giants laser cannons and even damaged their armor a little. Grant did as instructed and went punching away at the giant on the left, flying straight into his chest over and over again, bashing it's head with his crazy strength and just giving it a bad time. Allyson was doing much better. She created the giant sun sword, cut the giant down to size (thats funny) and began to relentlessly smash it with her hammer. Me on the other hand, I was on all fours, trying to catch my breath.

The truth was, my Speed Mode Momentum was spent, plus making all of those lightning constructs took energy to make especially the bigger ones. I was at my end but I couldn't let that stop me. I had a small amount of energy left, I had to put it to good use. I focused on a lightning strike, directly above me. It took a few seconds but finally I heard a loud CRAKK! BOOM! followed by the sensation of a bolt of lightning striking me in the back and restoring my energy. The good news was that now I had the energy to fight back. The bad news was that somehow my robot, the one on the middle, still had working laser cannons, oh and did I forget to mention that my speed was still out of commision?

Naturally, the giant started the fight by blasting his three laser cannons (one on the right hand, two on the shoulders) at me. I immediately created a thunder shield but even I couldn't block that much laser power. The shield surprisingly held, but it was pushed back and rammed into me. The momentum pushed me back into the wall; now I HAD to keep the shield up or i'd be vaporized. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see that Allyson was just wrapping up her fight, or should I say smashfest, but before she could rush in to help me, another giant appeared in a flash of light, forcing her to go back to work. Grant was still working on his giant and although he was making considerable progress tearing through it's chest and ripping anything that looked important, he wouldn't be finished quick enough to help me out.

The giant had me pinned down for about 20 seconds before I made a move to escape. I knew I was tiring fast, every second I held up my shield, my energy was draining, the question wasn't whether or not my shield would hold. The question was how long could I keep it up because, one way or another if I stayed in this position I WOULD get blasted. I concentrated on pushing the shield agianst the laser pressure, using my feet to push the shield even further. It wasn't much but it was enough to give me a small opening to jump towards my right and avoid the laser blast. Although I did escape the initial impact, the force from the explosion threw me forward and I smacked into another wall, only this time I was cornered. I scanned my energy levels and felt that I did have a decent amount of power left but I needed speed, it wouldn't be long until the giant shot at me again. "_Ok body," _I thought to myself. "_I need some Speed Mode Momentum, I don't care how you give it to me but I need it now."_

Amazingly enough, my body responded. Lightning started to flicker around me and I felt the insides of my body shake and vibrate. I felt the power build up in me, first slow but then it rushed to me all at once in a surge of voltage that concealed my whole body. The power surge felt so good I think I screamed in elation. After the surge died down though the giant shot at me or at least I heard the cannons go off. In actuality, the lasers had only traveled a few feet from the cannons and were moving super slow. I took this time to create another giant thunder sword and ran toward the giant. Instead of slashing at his legs, First, I literally ran up the length of his right leg, his torso (how fast was I going?) and cut off his right arm. Then, while I was on the arm that was falling I ran, across the giant's shoulders, cut off his other arm, ran back down his body and slashed both of his kneecaps. I then went out of speed Mode to watch the giant collapse and before he could fall over I threw my blade in the air and willed it to impale itself in the giant's forehead. Then I yelled at Grant to get out of his giant and, when he was safely away, I created a giant electrical boomerang and used to cut the giant across the middle and across the neck when it came back. I then willed the boomerang to fly back to me and I re-absorbed the energy. Meanwhile, Allyson was just finishing up her second robot. I don't' know how she did it but she was using a giant sword and shield made of sunlight so I pieced together a rough image of her blocking lasers and cutting off robotic appendages.

Of course the fight wasn't done yet, two more giants flashed into the room, one for me and Grant.

"Grant," I called. "Heads up,"

I created a giant thunder sword and willed it to fly over to him. Now before you ask me a million questions, I willed the thunder sword not to shock him or at least that's what I what I wanted it to do. Grant was hesitant at first, but after seeing that he had no other choice, he grabbed the blade, and flew towards the giant. The fight was so unbelievably quick, it was over before I even attacked my robot. Grant flew towards his giant, dodging the laser cannons and sliced the giant in half with the sword and then for good measure decapitated it and sliced his head, and body right down the middle. The poor thing didn't have a chance; I almost felt sorry for it.

I willed the thunder sword to fly back to me and I absorbed the energy, much to Grant's disappointment I think he was quite fond of it.

"What about yours?" he asked me.

"I've got it, nobody interfere with my battle."

My giant prepared to shoot at me but this time I was ready. I had never tried this before but then again I had never had lightning powers before. I imaged the three giant hands blocking the giants three cannons. Surprisingly it worked. right before the cannons went off. Three giant thunder hands blocked the cannons causing the blasts to backfire and severely damage the robot. After that I went into Speed Mode Supreme. For those of you that don't understand, Speed Mode Supreme is just me using a lot more of my Speed Force Momentum at once so that I can go a lot faster and be less affected by gravity so that I can run across vertical surfaces like a giant robot's body for example.

Anyway, I ran across the giant's body and placed four big balls of electrical energy on it's kneecaps and elbow joints. Then, once I was safely away I detonated them causing severe damage to the robot. I willed the excess energy to surge intensely across the robot causing even further damage to it's inside circuity and stuff making it shut down. Finally, I created a giant arrow and and willed it to fly straight through the robots head and then back to me so that I could take back the energy. The fight was finally over and Grant, Allyson, and I took a small break while Fury evaluated our performances.

"Grant," he started. "You're very strong, and very brave, but you're also very stupid. You don't just rush into battle without a plan of attack even if you can take on a dozen robots single handedly. I'd give you a D- but considering the fact that you did hold your own for a good while, plus the fact that you did shape up your act after you're little ordeal, i'll give you a B.

"Thank you sir," said Grant. "I won't be doing that again; I uhhh…..made a promise."

Fury nodded and addressed Allyson.

"Ms. Grace. During this battle you were very level headed, you proved that you can stand on you own as well as participate in a team. You did indeed hold your own until you're unfortunate incident, lucky that Jason was there to save you. But other than that, you have proven yourself to be a capable fighter, and a reliable asset to your team. You get an A.

Allyson blushed blushed like crazy.

"Thank you Colonel Fury," she said. "I did my best."

Finally, Fury addressed me.

"Mr. Fuller. You were very good all around. You made very good use of your powers especially considering the fact you just came into them. You displayed ingenuity, creativity, resourcefulness, improvisation, and leadership qualities that are necessary for successful teams. Also, you have proven yourself to be a very capable fighter both as an individual and as a member of the team that you led to victory. You get an A+.

My eyes lit up and I couldn't help but smile. It was just like gym class, I had blew the competition away and wowed the coach.

"Thank you sir, couldn't have done it without my friends."

Friends. That word sounded weird to say out loud especially with the word my in front of them but it felt good like I finally belonged somewhere.

"Yeah Yeah," said Fury. "Don't get sappy on me, ya'll still got training to so let's hop to it.

The rest of the day went by in a flurry of training activities. I knew for a fact that Grant and Allyson sparred against each other a few times (Grant won after Allyson put up a good fight; as it turns out, he's strong enough to smash through solar constructs) as well as worked together in a bunch of air simulations. As for me, they put me on some kind of weird mega treadmill and made me run real fast while they tracked my speed. While doing this, I learned that I could use my lightning powers to refuel my Speed Mode Momentum by making it double back through my body. It took a little bit of concentration at first but after 30 minutes of straight running I got the hang of it. Then they told me to run with my lightning trail. At first I was like WHAT? but they showed me a recording of me running up the body length of the giants. As it turns out, when in Speed Mode Supreme, I was a an electric blur, it looked awesome. I tapped into Speed Mode Supreme and took off. I didn't pay too much attention to how fast I was going but I did once see that on the meter I was going at 2000 mph (and yes I did feel the sonic boom after I broke the sonic barrier 1,239 mph ago). Fury also had me fight against specialized androids. For example, I fought an android that had super speed for 2 hours straight. At first, the fight was really even, then the android started to kick my butt. Finally, late in the training session I learned how to effectively use hip tossing, and shifting momentum to use another speedster's momentum against them. Also, Fury had me fight against androids that could blast, fire and multi colored lasers at me. The fight was four on one and although the androids did put up a bit of a fight, (they REALLY put up a fight) my lightning constructs helped me win the battle. Finally, Fury had me fight against Grant and Allyson. When I fought against Allyson, it was a battle of lightning weapons vs sun weapons. We blasted each other back and forth with thunder and sun and occasionally, we used constructs like swords, shields, even missiles at one point (it was a really competitive fight). Ultimately, I won when I knocked Allyson out of the sky with a lightning strike and used my super speed and lightning constructs to chain her in lightning handcuffs and trap her in a lightning barrier (I didn't have the heart to actually hit her).

Grant on the other hand was different. When I tried fighting him with my thunder fists he eventually overpowered me and I had to resort to using lightning constructs. But remember when I said he was strong enough to break through constructs? Yeah well the thing was…..he broke my constructs, or at least most of them. I tried to hit him with a thunder sledgehammer, he caught it and swung me around. I created thunder fists, like the ones I used with the giants, to beat on him from a distance. That worked for a good 20 seconds before he took to the air and quickly outstripped my constructs. Also, my lightning blasts didn't have too much of an effect on him. While he was flying I hit him twice with lightning strikes and he only faltered, but he didn't fall, forcing me to go into Speed Mode, create a supercharged thunderbolt, and hurl it at Grant. This time Grant went soaring backwards into a wall but he quickly got up and with a yell, came flying toward me at the speed of a missile. I created a shield construct but Grant flew through it like it wasn't there. Before impact, I went into Speed Mode, created thunder fists, and began to beat up on Grant. It's impossible to say how long I was punching Grant, 5 seconds? Maybe 10 or 20? However I did know that at one point Grant did the unthinkable. He stopped my fist from hitting his face and kicked me backwards. I charged at him again, determined to continue my assault, and he charged me back. The crazy thing was, he wasn't moving slow at all. we were going the same speed. Grant had super speed!

We battled in Speed Mode for a long time. Punching, running up walls, you know super speed stuff. Though I was initially better than Grant at Speed Mode combat, his strength was the deciding factor. The whole fight I was out witting Grant, striking him in multiple places, changing, directions, a few times I actually managed to trip him up and resume my furious thunder fist beatdown for a short time before he managed to get me off of him. Finally, Grant (gotta get the word out of my mouth) B..B….BEAT me when I tried to hip toss him but couldn't due to his weight difference. Grant got a hold of me flew me in the air and punched me so hard I flew into a wall and before I could fall to the ground, Grant pinned me to the wall, punched me a good few times in the face and stomach and then threw me across the room where I hit another wall and fell to the ground. Luckily, I wasn't too hurt and Grant helped me up.

"Good fight man," said Grant with a smile of sportsmanship on his face. "You're a really tough opponent"

"Thanks man," I said shaking his hand. "Good thing were on the same side huh?"

"Good for you bro,"

We both laughed hysterically and left the training room. Afterwards, we rejoined Allyson who was also coming from a training exercise.

"Who won?" she asked us.

"Grant," I said.

She gave Grant another hug and congratulated him. Then she also hugged me telling me that as long as I tried my best I was a winner too (spoken like a true 2nd placer). Afterwards, Fury announced over the intercom that we were done with training for the day and that we could go and get some dinner (it was 5:00 pm at the time and we had trained through lunch). Also, he told us that tomorrow we would have our "final exam" and that we should rest up for it.


	6. Chapter 6: The Final Exam

**Chapter 6:The Final Exam**

Grant, Allyson, and I made our way to the cafeteria where we pigged out on burgers, fries, ribs, pizza, the whole nine yards. I can honestly say that I have never been so hungry in all my life, I blew through five plates filled to the brink with food and still had more room. (Before you judge me, I did run faster than the speed of sound so I burned a lot of calories) I could tell that Grant and Allyson wanted to talk about everything that happened today and so did I but right now, it didn't matter. Nobody talked, nobody asked any questions. Right now food was all that mattered so we ate until we couldn't eat anymore.

"So what do you guys wanna do now?" Grant asked once we were done feasting.

Allyson and I shrugged. Like I said, eating was the only priority at the moment. We didn't exactly plan on what to do later.

"Ok," said Grant. "Well do you guys wanna come over to my room; I have a huge flatscreen and we can watch TV together, talk about stuff, and just hang out."

"I'm cool with that," said Allyson. "How about you Jason?"

"I'm in," I said. "What room do stay in bro?"

"Room 337B, it's not too far from here, all we have to do is take the elevator and walk around a corner, let's go.

We all got up, put away or many trays, and went towards the elevator. Once inside, Grant pressed the 2nd floor button and we shot upwards. After getting out, we all took a right turn around a corner and walked five doors down until we got to room 337B. Grant took out his key card, put it in the slot and opened the door, letting us in. Grant's room wasn't too different from mine. We had the exact same bed, drawers, closets, even the same TV. The only difference was that Grant's room had a sofa and a recliner chair and a beanbag seat. I guess Fury knew he would be the one that would have guests over, probably why my room didn't have any furniture. Anyway, Grant got a green shirt and some white shorts out of his drawers (he was still wearing his tattered clothes at the time) and went into his bathroom to change.

"Nice room huh?" I asked Allyson

"Yeah," she said. "Mine doesn't have that cool beanbag chair, by the way, dibs."

She quickly plopped on the bean bag chair (I wanted to sit on the beanbag chair) and made herself at home. Because my only other option was to sit on a sofa meant for two, and because I really didn't feel that close to Grant yet, I grabbed the remote, flipped on the TV, and claimed the recliner chair.

"What do you wanna watch Allyson?" I asked her.

"Hmmm," she thought for a moment. "Teennick, see what's on Teennick."

"Sure bolts,"

"HAHAHA," she laughed. "Good one Jason."

At first, I thought I'd have to turn to the TV Guide or something to find the channels but as it turned out, S.H.I.E.L.D. had DirectTV, I had that back at home so I already knew where Teennick was. I turned there, checked the time listings and saw nothing but Drake & Josh for the next 4 hours.

"Hey Allyson," I said. "There's a Drake & Josh marathon starting next, wanna watch?"

"Totally," she said in a voice that said "_Did you even need to ask?" _"Who doesn't love Drake & Josh?"

"Losers," said Grant, who was just getting through with changing. I noticed that he trashed his ruined pants but held on to the remains of his jersey; poor guy, must have been hard for him to get kicked off the team like that, I pretended like I didn't see the jersey.

"You know what?" he asked. "I wanted the beanbag chair Allyson."

"Get in line dude," I told him.

"See, I would move," said Allyson. "But this chair is super comfy sooo…."

We all laughed until I heard the Drake & Josh theme song play.

"Hey guys it's on," I said. "Sit down and enjoy Grant."

"But the beanbag chair," he said in a fake whiny voice.

"Dude, it's your room, she has to leave at some point,"

"Or do I?" Allyson asked in a playfully seductive tone.

"OOOHHHHHH!" Grant and I screamed.

I gave Grant a fist bump as we both laughed hysterically at Allyson. Ignoring my minor feelings of jealousy.

"But then again," said Allyson. "I hear Jason does have a bigger bed than you Grant, maybe i'll spend the night there."

Grant screamed again; I probably would have too but I was too busy blushing my head off. After we laughed the dirty jokes out of our system, we settled down, Grant took a seat on his sofa, and we started to watch the Drake & Josh marathon. Even though I had seen all of these episodes like a million times, when I was watching them with Grant and Allyson everything seemed newer for some reason. Little funny things I was already used to suddenly became hilarious. Episodes that were so old I could recite everything word for word suddenly had that new appeal as if today was the first day. For like 3 three hours everyone just watched TV, laughed it up, and just enjoyed each others company. We probably could have stayed that way all night but out of nowhere Grant asked:

"Hey guys, if were a team then who's the leader?"

"Jason of course," said Allyson before I could say anything.

"What?" I asked her.

"Oh don't look at me like that it's obvious. You were so good at giving orders when were were fighting that robot army. You're fair, balanced, and cool under fire; if we are a team you are so our leader."

I looked at Grant, hoping for some kind of a disagreement in his eyes. I didn't wanna lead some rag tag team of mutants, I just wanted to go home. Unfortunately, Grant shrugged and smiled. He was at an unspoken agreement with Allyson; whether I liked it or not I was the new leader now (I really hate democracy).

"Ok then," said Grant. "So what's our team name gonna be."

"Dude, why does that matter?" I asked him.

"Because every awesome super hero team needs a name bro, that way people remember us when we save the world and stuff."

"First off all, we are not superheroes, were mutants, the rest of the world hates and fears us.

"Hey come on man, we may be mutants but were still gonna do good with our powers right? By default that makes us heroes no matter what others say; so come on, let's think of a cool name."

What was with this guy? Did his parents teach him how to be this optimistic or was e born like this?

"Oh, I know," said Allyson. "How about Delta Force"

"Nah way too military type," said Grant. "Good name, but too millitary type."

"Ok then how about the Teen Avengers?"

"Too similar to the Young Avengers, besides we wanna be original not another branch of a franchise."

"Ok then you think of a name."

"How about Team Grant, just kidding. How about team Starbolt."

"Catchy name," I said. "But since none of us aside from Allyson have star or space related powers it wouldn't work out."

We went through names for like an hour before eventually coming to terms that it wasn't working out and that we'd put a pin in it. For now, we would go with Delta Force as a prototype name.

"Ok now for individual names," said Grant.

"Oh God," I said.

"Come on Jason," said Allyson. "Don't be a downer, this is fun."

She hit me with that cute smile she always does when she gets excited about stuff. I knew I couldn't disappoint her even if I wanted to so I joined in on the name making fun.

"Ok me first," said Grant. "How about Super Dude?"

"You stole that from Kenan & Kel," said Allyson. "Try again."

"Mega Man?"

"Too plain, anybody can think of that."

"Uhhh, Power Guy,"

"Come on Grant, your not even trying anymore, dig deep you can do this."

Grant thought hard for a while (I think I saw smoke coming from his head LOL) before blurting out:

"SUPER-G"

We all thought about this for a while.

"Why Super-G?" I asked.

"Because, it stands for Super Grant, but now without saying my name, I mean G can stand for anything right?"

"That's true but you should put a pin in that bro, Super-G is a cool name, good to start with, but you deserve better.

"Thanks man, alright now for your name; personally I think Thunder Man, Thundersprint, or Lightning Guy is an awesome name."

"Uhhh, for right now i'll go with Thunder Man, it's a good starting name, who knows, it may catch on."

"Alright, Thunder Man lives, Allyson it's your turn."

Grant and Allyson went through a bunch of names. Some of the names that came up were: Sun Girl, Sun Princess, Solar Woman, even Sun Power for some reason.

"Sunbird," I finally said.

Grant and Allyson stopped talking; either the name was really good or really bad but it got their attention.

"Sunbird?" Allyson asked me, she seemed to like the name. "Why?"

"Well," I started. "Obviously, the word Sun should be a part of your hero name; combine that with the fact that you can heal people by singing beautiful songs, plus the name sounds really mythological and cool, Sunbird is what I came up with."

Allyson thought about this for a little bit; my heart was fiercely hammering for some reason.

"I love it," she finally said. "In fact I'll keep it, permanently."

"Awesomesauce!" said Grant. "Super-G, Thunder Man, and Sunbird of Team Delta Force are officially a go, hands in everybody!"

Grant thrust his palm in front of him and looked at Me and Allyson in gleeful expectation. I couldn't help but laugh. I may have been chosen to lead the team but Grant was the heart and soul of it. I put my hand in, so did Allyson.

"Ready guys?" he asked us.

"Ready," I said.

"Heck yeah," said Allyson.

"Alright then, on the count of three, we scream BREAK, 6,4,3…

We all screamed BREAK, and thrusted out hands into the air, laughing uncontrollably and living in the moment. After we calmed down, we spent another hour talking about possibilities for our final exam. Like: what would Fury have us doing, how we could work together better as a team, and making plans for possible scenarios, we even messed around with our powers a bit to see if our plans were possible; luckily we didn't blow anything up. After a while, I checked the time:11:30 P.M.

"Hey guys," I said. "We should probably get some sleep now; it's getting late and we need all of our energy for the exam tomorrow."

"Spoken like a true leader," said Allyson. "Alright, i'm going now, Jason you can walk me to my room if you want."

"Sure bolts,"

Allyson snickered.

"Bye Grant," I said before leaving. "See ya tomorrow."

"Sure thing bro, see you two in the A.M."

"Sleep tight," said Allyson. "Don't let Nick Fury bite."

We all had one more good laugh before Allyson and I left Grant's room. I then followed Allyson to the elevator where she pressed the number two button and we shot downwards. I followed Allyson to her room 259Y and watched her as she opened her door. I took a brief look inside her room which was about the same as mine and Grant except for the fact that she had a reading desk with a few chairs, and a chandelier (why would she need that).

"Thanks for walking me here Jason," she said.

"No problem," I said. "But before I go, can I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure, come inside we can talk for as long as you want."

I hesitated and my reaction must have been visible because Allyson laughed and playfully hit me on the arm.

"Not in THAT way you idiot, we'll just sit down and talk, nothing more ok?

"Ok sure, I mean, that's what I was thinking the whole time anyway."

Once inside I pulled two chairs in front of the TV area and sat down next to Allyson.

"Before we start," she said. "I wanna say thanks for the awesome name, I hope you and Grant find yours too.

"No problem," I said. "So, my first question is did you mean all that stuff you said about me being a good leader?"

"Of course Jason, you're a natural, I may have just met you today but I know you're a good and dependable friend, with you leading us, this team will go places; why do you doubt yourself?

"Well for starters, i've never really had friends; ever since my parents died when I was seven i've never made an attempt to be social; but I really like you and Grant and I just don't wanna mislead you or get you hurt."

I wasn't looking at Allyson when I said this and was completely surprised when I saw tears streaming down her face. I made a move to get her a tissue or something but she waved me off saying that she was ok.

"God Jason," she started. "I didn't know, i'm so sorry."

"It's fine," I said trying for a smile. "My foster mom Doris has been so good to me ever since I was seven, I may miss my parents but I always have Doris my other mom.

"That's good, good for you Jason, so what was your other question?

"What do you think of this whole hero thing, I mean us being a hero team, I know you and Grant would be awesome heroes but do you think i'm cut out for it?

"Well let me ask you this; if you saw some guy mugging a family at gunpoint what would you do?

"I would use my speed to disarm the mugger, knock him out, and return everything he stole to the family."

"Why? You don't know that family, you owe them nothing, and this isn't any of my business."

"Because I have the power to help them and as long as it is in my power to help those who need it, i'll do everything I can."

"Then that's your answer Jason. You may not want to be a superhero but you are a hero at heart so yes you are cut out for it, you just don't know it yet."

I thought on that for a moment. Maybe Allyson was right but it still doesn't change the fact that I was on the verge of becoming the very thing I hated. Heroes never help when you need them, they're always busy saving the world but they can't save the little guys.

"Hey," said Allyson shaking me out of my thought bubble. "You'll see Jason, you may not think so but you are a hero, it's what you were meant to be.

"Thanks Allyson," I said getting up to leave. "Sorry for making you cry."

"It's ok, it's just I couldn't imagine life without my mom and dad, i'm so sorry you lost your's and at such a young age, it's so not fair."

"Hey life isn't all bad, I met you and Grant after all,"

She smiled and reached out to hug me. It felt good to hug her, like I was wrapping my arms around the sun itself.

"Alright," I said after forcing myself to let go. "I'm gonna go to bed now, sleep tight Allyson."

"Don't let Nick Fury bite Jason," she said as she took out her PJ's and went into her bathroom to get ready.

I made my way back to my room, took a quick shower, slipped into my own PJ's and climbed into my bed. Before drifting off to sleep, I thought to myself: _Can I really be a superhero?_

My alarm woke me up the next day at 7 A.M., it also shot me a hologram message saying that the exam would take place at 10 A.M. in room 150G and that our trainers would be available in that room for extra training until it was time for the exam. Because I had extra time, I took a quick shower before putting on some black workout pants, an orange T-shirt with the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on it, and a black warm up jacket; then I left to get some breakfast before hitting the gym.

I met Grant and Allyson who were already sitting in our usual spot eating their food. It seemed like we were all on one accord with the dress code because Grant was dressed in black workout pants and a black muscle shirt. Allyson was also dressed in workout pants and a muscle shirt although her shit was yellow instead of black. Together we all looked pretty fearsome, more so considering the fact that we were all super powerful mutant teenagers.

"What's up guys?" I said as I sat down to eat (btw i was eating the same thing from yesterday but today I added blueberry muffins).

"It's all good," said Grant. "Ready to kick this exam in the face?"

"Whoever they put us up against, they won't know what hit em."

"Sure they will," said Allyson. "Three high schoolers that just happen to be superheroes in training."

We all chuckled at this although I did notice that when I glanced at Allyson she kind of avoided my gaze. I didn't blame her; I mean we did get in pretty deep about some personal stuff last night, I just hoped I didn't make anything weird between us.

"So are you guys gonna do that extra training thing?" asked Grant.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm gonna do some sword fighting stuff with Nightcrawler to get warmed up; what about you two?"

"I'm gonna do some sparring with Luke and Ms. Marvel for a bit and if you're free I'd like to work some speed combat with you; don't worry i'll dial back the punches, wouldn't wanna take out my teammate on the day we really need him."

"Whatever dude," I said as I shrugged my shoulders. "Allyson, what are you gonna do?"

"I'm just gonna work on some of those moves we worked on last night," she said. "If you two muscle heads wanna wear yourselves out, be my guest."

After breakfast, we all made our way to room 150G where, sure enough the heroes were waiting for us, well almost all of them."

"Nightcrawler?" I asked as I approached him. "Where-

"She's still recovering Jason, you did quite a number on her but do not worry she'll be fine and back on her feet by tomorrow."

Wow, in less than three days I had put two people in hospital beds; my hero meter wasn't exactly feeling very full and this moment.

"Hey do not blame yourself mein friend," said Nightcrawler. Everything will be ok; you came to practice swordplay no?

"Uhh yeah," I said. "I wanted to see about learning some new moves and practicing new skills, can you help me?"

"Of course, grab a blade we'll get started."

For an hour, Nightcrawler and I practiced many different aspects of sword fighting. From different ways to parry strikes, dodging and countering attacks, he even taught me how to use backflips and sword throwing to defeat opponents. You'd think that it take me a long time to learn this kind of stuff but I was a natural, each lesson only took like five minutes tops. Maybe it was the fact that I had a secret passion for sword fighting, or maybe it was my super speed and reflexes helping me along but the point was I was a sword fighting machine and there was no stopping me. Nightcrawler and I took small 2 minute breaks during subject changes; during these breaks, I was able to check on Grant and Allyson's individual practice courses. Grant and Luke were pretty much doing the same thing Nightcrawler and I were except Grant was learning takedown moves, arm grabs, wrestling type moves, even how to do effective drop kicks. They sparred a few times but now that Grant had speed and strength, the fight was pretty one-sided. Allyson, though at first promised not to do it, was in an intense power battle with Storm (probably because she didn't want Storm to feel left out, that's so Allyson). I realized that Storm was holding back on Allyson yesterday (then again who wasn't) because today Storm was using everything she had. From lightning to wind, even hail and blizzards at one point. On the 2 minute intervals that I tuned into the fight, Storm and Allyson were keeping each other at bay, while also trying to get a decisive hold on one another. At one point it seemed as though Allyson was gonna lose when Storm summoned a blizzard so powerful it blanketed the entire room in frost, making me very sorry I didn't wear a jacket or a hoodie that day. I saw what Storm was trying to do, use the blizzard to extinguish Allyson's light (I assume she thought her light was based off of heat) and make her powerless. This planned worked for maybe a few seconds as Allyson did flicker on and off a few times. However, just when it seemed that she was going to go out, she released a big wave of solar energy, knocking Storm off balance and turning off the blizzard. Her wave was so powerful and as it turned out, so full of heat that it evaporated the residual frost and left me feeling like I had just walked out of a would eventually win the fight when she created a solar force field around Storm, which by the way, looked like a mini sun. When Storm tried to blast her way out, the energy rebounded throughout the force field and fried her. Also, to add insult to injury Allyson made the force field implode on itself and cause a massive explosion, taking Storm out of commision. Luckily for Storm, Allyson could heal just as fast as she could hurt and after a few heavenly verses, Storm was up on her feet again, good as new.

At 9:30 Nightcrawler and I decided to stop the lessons and get down to the sparring. The first match was pretty even considering that I wasn't making as many rookie mistakes as I did the previous day. Nightcrawler pushed me way harder though and I had to really focus so that I wouldn't fall for any of his fancy tricks. For example, at one point during all off the slashing, blocking and countering, Nightcrawler made a motion to stab at me. Lucky for me, we already went over feinting moves and I saw the trick coming from a mile away. I stepped back and when he brought the blade around for a horizontal slash, I parried the blade while simultaneously, kicking him in the head Shawn Michaels style. This put him off balance long enough for me to attack him with a flurry of stabs and slashes. Unfortunately, I underestimated Nightcrawler's recovery time and while I was on the attack, he dodged one of my slashes and when I tried for another stab, he locked my blade in the hilt of his sword and quickly disarmed me, throwing my blade to the far left. The blade however was not far enough so that I could not retrieve it so when Nightcrawler slashed at me, I side flipped over his blade (LIKE A BOSS) and upon landing, jumped to the left, grabbed my blade, and rolled away, knowing that blue boy would try a teleport take down. Our match went on for another five minutes until I decided to try that backflip move Nightcrawler showed me. I put the pressure on slashing, stabbing, and feinting moves until I found a golden opportunity where Nightcrawler was distracted enough for me to do a surprise backflip. Unfortunately, where his chin was supposed to be I felt nothing but air. When I landed, I felt the impact of a dull sword pelting me in the chest.

"What happened Jason?" Nightcrawler asked me.

"I messed up, I thought you wouldn't be expecting the backflip move."

"I wasn't but you made it obvious that you were going to do it."

"How?"

"You let your guard down and you're body language depicted that you would try for that move. As a swordsman you're greatest element other than skill is surprise, try to mask you're moves more so that your opponent does not read them like an open book."

"Alright, i'll work on it. Come on I have 15 minutes until it's time for my exam; we can squeeze one more fight in."

The second fight was pretty much like the first except that I was a lot better. I took Nightcrawler's advice and made an attempt to not look so predictable. For example, I noticed that I make face when I do or are about to do certain moves. When I am about to parry a strike I look at the blade; Nightcrawler always sees this and changes the direction of his strikes, nearly cutting me. When, I tried for a feint move, I scrunge up my face in concentration and it alerts Nightcrawler to my tricks. After I realized I was doing this, I made a conscious effort to change it. I focused on one face of concentration and made a mental effort to hold this face no matter what. At first it was a little difficult, but I found that the trick wasn't to focus on what I was doing, but why I was doing this. I was doing this because I wanted to be a better swordsman, because if nothing else, I wanted to beat Nightcrawler at least one time. My face change worked. Even though I still wasn't able to hit him, because of my constant face of concentration, Nightcrawler was predicting my next attacks way less than he did before. This allowed me to take the offensive more often and put the pressure on him. I slashed at him horizontally with my sword and when he parried my strike, I quickly stepped in and kneed him in the gut. While he was tumbling backwards I quickly baseball slid an swept his legs out from under him. Knowing Nightcrawler for the acrobatic genius he was, I knew full well that he would land on his feet. So, I tapped into my Speed Mode, just enough to make me go a little faster, and quickly pushed myself off of the floor and into a power kick, landing perfectly on Nightcrawler's chest. Just as I had him pinned down, he teleported away, which I totally knew he would. I Immediately went into Speed Mode Supreme and moved away from the spot I was standing. Right where I would have been, I saw a cloud of blue smoke appear and the slow mo vision of Nightcrawler rematerializing out of it. I quickly got behind him, turned my Speed Mode off and slashed him across the back.

"Finally beat you," I said as I helped Nightcrawler get on his feet.

"Good job mein friend, he said smiling, (that still unnerves me). "You are getting much better but you still have much to learn."

"Good thing I have such a good teacher then.

Nightcrawler chuckled.

"I guess so," he said. "By the way, you only have five minutes left before your exam, good luck, hopefully you'll pass and we can still cross swords in the future."

I didn't like the way he said "hopefully," but I thanked him for the support and went to find Grant so that we could use the remaining time to practice speed combat. To be honest, I couldn't tell you who was winning the fight. Everything was way too fast, plus Grant an I got some pretty good hits in each other. Although I will admit, one time he did score a major blow by grabbing my arm, twisting it behind my back, and grabbing me. Then after getting a lock on me he abruptly stopped while twisting, throwing me across the room. Only my reflexes kept me from ramming back first into the wall. After that, we both decided to call it a draw and rest up for the main event.

We took a seat next to Allyson who was also resting up by sitting on a bench.

"Hey guys," she said. "Ready for the exam?"

I noticed she was breathing rather heavily and so was Grant.

"Are you two nervous?" I asked them.

They both flustered around trying to answer my question, laughing nervously and mumbling their words. Oh yeah, they were nervous. If they were to go into battle this way, we'd never stand a chance; so as the leader, I decided to give my teammates some words of encouragement.

"Guys, you're acting like whips," I started. "Come on, we're more than ready for this, what's wrong with you two."

"Nothing man," said Grant. "Just nerves before the big game, happens to everyone."

"I'm just afraid of failing," said Allyson. "I've never made anything lower than an A in all my life."

I fought back the urge to say "overachiever".

"It's ok you guys, we won't fail." I said. "Were Delta Force remember?"

"That's only a temporary name," said Allyson.

"Not the point," I snapped. The point is that together, we are an unstoppable team; as long as we stick together nothing can beat us, so come on let's do this.

I thrust my hand out.

"Delta Force on three?" I asked.

Grant and Allyson slowly broke into grins and thrust their hands on top of mine.

"6,4,3 DELTA FORCE!" We all shouted.

I was better at this whole leader thing than I thought.

"Attention trainees," said the voice of Nick Fury over the intercom. "You're exam will begin in 20 seconds, prepare yourselves now."

Grant, Allyson and I got up, stretched for a few seconds, did some jumping around to shake off the remaining nerves we had, and got into our various battle defensive stances. We all had a pretty good idea what was coming at us and even if it wasn't what we thought it was, we were prepared for many more alternate scenarios. All that was left was for the showdown to begin. The countdown reached 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1.

A big flash of light enveloped the entire room. Immediately, Allyson and I put up barriers, good thing too because we were under some crazy lazer fire. Through the glare of Allyson's barrier and the electric surge of mine I saw and army of robots, runts an titans blasting away at us like there was no tomorrow. I may have been exaggerating a bit but by the looks of it, there had to be at least 2000 robots on our tails. Before you ridicule me or say that's impossible, just know that the room we were in was really really big, some rooms in the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier are like that, bigger on the inside than you'd think judging on the outside entrance. Anyway, this was exactly the kind of scenario we were ready for.

"Allyson, you think you can hold you're barrier while I do my thing?" I asked her.

"Yeah no problem," she said. "Just make it quick, this is a lot of robots shooting at me after all."

I let my barrier drop, closed my eyes, and focused. So far I could cause lightning strikes easily, but what I was going to do now was going to be way over the top.I imaged a thunderstorm right over the robot army. I willed this thunderstorm to be big, to have lightning striking in all directions but to hit only the robots. I felt the power build in me like a giant wave getting ready to crash on the shore. I pulled my arms back in and with a yell, thrust them back out (this time that actually was necessary). I don't exactly know what happened because I kept my eyes closed for the whole time. However, I did hear thunder, really loud thunder booms. I heard lightning striking metal in all directions, the noise was actually quite deafening. I don't;t know how many robots I had destroyed already but I knew it wasn't enough. I kept up the thunderstorm for as long as I could, about 20 seconds, before I dropped to my knees, completely exhausted. Before you criticize my plan saying that it was stupid of me to blow my energy like that all at once, just know that I thought of that in advance. Before unleashing that thunderstorm, I imagined a small bit of power being reserved in me, like a little ball of electricity, locked in my chest. Upon hitting rock bottom in the energy department, I imagined that ball of lightning exploding in my chest and spreading electricity throughout my body. I willed the electricity to double back through my body, giving me more energy. Finally, when I had enough energy, I powered up like a Super Saiyan, electricity surging like crazy around me, refueling me completely (I did this for two reasons. A: I wanted to see if I could, B: I could risk a lightning strike inside of a a force field with my friends inside).

"Alright everyone," I said, feeling way stronger than I ever had in my life. "Right now, there's way too many robots for us to divide them in sections so for now were just gonna focus on demolition. Grant i'm gonna give you a thunder blade, Allyson will give you a sun blade, together were gonna use our speed to mow down as many robots as we can on the left side. Allyson, do that sun gravity thing you were working on last night, trash as many bots on the right side as you can. After we reduce the numbers down a bit, we'll divide into sections and finish the fight off; everyone ready?

"Yeah," said Allyson.

"I need those blades first," said Grant.

Allyson an I created the swords for him.

"Explosive waves on three? I asked Allyson.

"Why wait?" she responded.

We both thrusted our hands out releasing a huge wave of sun an electric energy, trashing maybe 100 robots plus the 300 or so I had trashed with my thunderstorm. Afterwards, Grant and I dashed to the left side of the room and went to work.

Together with our speed and combined efforts, Grant and I completely decimated our enemies. I went into Speed Mode Supreme, created two thunderbolts and went hacking away at any robot that I came in contact with. Because I was making my lightning double back through my body, I didn't have to worry about losing power or momentum, making it easier for me to enjoy slicing and dicing the robots. With my thunderbolts and my speed I struck down maybe 10 or twenty robots per second, even titans didn't stand a chance of surviving when I cut them in half at the waist. Grant was also doing his thing pretty well, slicing robots in half an even using his swords to create a clothesline, moving down robots like grass. We must have taken out like 500 robots together, talk about teamwork. By the way I think it is worth mentioning that even with his super speed, Grant was still moving at slightly less than normal speed from my perspective in Speed Mode Supreme. Anyway, As we were mowing down robots together, I checked on Allyson's progress (I'll tell the events in normal speed time to avoid confusion). I couldn't tell you how she was doing physically speaking because I couldn't exactly see her. However I could see what she was doing and boy was it scary. Remember when I told her to do that sun gravity thing? Well the thing about that was, last night, we figured if she has sun powers, she should be able to make her own personal miniature sun. The thing about a sun is, it has a huge gravitational pull and, if used as a weapon, especially when it came to defeating huge amounts of enemies, a huge ball of fire that can pull enemies in would come in handy. When we were hanging out in Grant's room Allyson tried this out. She created a mini sun about the size of a ping pong ball and used it to attract and torch the heck out of some paper clips. By the way were Allyson's power based on light or heat? I'd have to ask her later. Anyway, Allyson was doing the exact same thing, except this time she created a sun that was about the size of the world that was on the shoulders of Atlas at the Rockefeller center, which by the way is pretty big. Because I couldn't see her anywhere, I assumed she was inside of her own sun, which was actually as good for defense as well as offense considering the fact that the lasers the robots shot at her didn't get past the barrier. Allyson's sun was so powerful that I felt the room's temperature increase by at least 50 degrees. To make matters worse for the robots, Allyson's sun literally pulled them off the ground and towards the flaming ball of death. Upon reaching contact with the mini sun, the robots were either, melted like popsicles, burned to a charred metal crisp or crumpled like and soda can due to the intense gravity. The robo death toll had to be around another 500 on Allyson's part.

After, the range of the robots reached about 500 I ordered the team to execute plan Sector. Plan Sector basically meant that we would do the thing we did yesterday when Allyson took the outside robots, I took the mid range ones, and Grant took the inside ones. The battle wasn't even close. The three of us finished off the remaining robots in less than 5 minutes, a new personal best; however even I knew that this was too easy. We would have a lot more incoming challenges before our exam was over.

Because I have an annoying habit of being right whenever I shouldn't, another huge wave of light flashed and more enemies appeared. Now don't get me wrong, I was ready for giants to come sooner or later but I didn't expect them to throw ten giants at us all at once. Even I didn't anticipate this one. Lucky for me, Allyson wasn't as frozen up as I was. Before any of the giants could take a shot, one of them on the left started to break down, or should I say in. It was like he was being swallowed and digested by his own stomach (if robots can have stomachs). When it finally digested itself, I didn't expect to see a sun in it's chest, furthermore, I didn't expect that sun to fly through another giant and repeat the same process.

"GUYS!" Allyson screamed at us. "DO SOMETHING"

That shook me an Grant out of our fear freeze. Grant was still holding his blades, I made one for myself, and gave him a look. He nodded and at the same time, we broke into a run. No matter how many giants there were, I was so glad that they all stayed completely still when I went into Speed Mode Supreme so that I could hack them to pieces. For maybe 10 seconds total, I ran from giant to giant, hacking off limbs, cutting off heads, and you know, doing the whole being totally awesome thing. Oh and Grant was doing good too I saw him hacking away and stuff like that. After Grant and I were done killing giants (I finished first) we were gonna help Allyson, who was probably being overwhelmed at the moment. Yeah….no she wasn't. Maybe it was because I was preoccupied cutting down giants, or because I wasn't paying attention, but either way, while I was looking the other way, Allyson's mini sun wasn't so mini anymore. I was standing next to Grant looking at a burning ball of fire 5x the size it used to be (if you need help visualizing, imagine a sun the size of a small mansion). Together, Grant an I took out six giants, meaning four were left for Allyson. Her sun was so hot, the heat slapped my body, making me feel like I was in a dryer but that wasn't the worst part. The gravity from her sun was so intense that it was literally pulling the remaining four giants limb from limb, (why weren't me and Grant effected, not that i'm complaining) they didn't even have a chance of fighting back. The robot pieces were obliterated into nothingness upon reaching impact with the sun and when it was all said and done, Allyson willed it to shrink down to the size of an apple. Good thing too, because new giants flashed in at that very moment. There were another ten giants in total or at least there were until Allyson did her thing. She threw her apple sized sun at the nearest giant and upon impact, the sun regrew to it's massive form. This time, instead of breaking off piece by piece the robots were just sucked into Allyson's sun and melted into metal soup. The one thing I wasn't ready for was when the sun exploded in a giant wave of fire that was going to burn me to a crisp. The flames were moving slow so at first I thought that I had activated my Speed Mode again but that wasn't the case. The flames redirected their course and flew towards Allyson who absorbed the energy easily. Her face was intense, angry even, which was ten times more scary when she was in her sun form. I could tell that no amount of robots would be able to stop her, not even Grant and I could take her when she was like this. Grant and I exchanged glances, looked at Allyson, and looked at each other again. We both got the message: Do not f*#^ with Allyson if you wanna live.

Allyson landed next to us and turned off her sun form.

"Well that was fun," she said in her usual perky voice (somehow that scared me even more).

"What do you mean was?" I asked her. "This isn't over yet.

"What makes you say that?"

"Look around you."

The room was changing, literally. A ripple traveled through the room as if it were made of water and when it had settled the room was totally different. Grant Allyson and I were looking at a battlefield about the size of two football fields with a bunch of metal war barricades spanning across the flat landscape. At the end of the room were four metal towers that were positioned in the rough shape of a square. On those towers were huge and I mean HUGE cannons that probably shot lasers that could blast through titanium. As if this wasn't bad enough in between those towers, on top of metal steps the size of houses, was a flag, a big neon green flag just waiting to be captured.

"Part two kiddies," said Fury. "You're job is to get that flag over yonder without being blasted to bits by these awesome laser cannons I have installed just for you to play with; Try not to break them too badly, I didn't get the extended warranty. Oh, and I forgot to mention, standing in your way will be and unending an I do mean unending army of robots with laser guns and stuff like that. Oh, and you all have to grab the flag at the same time or else you all fail, so no using that super speed to try and cheat your way into winning. Finally, you all have to get the flag without letting the robot army grab your flag or you all fail. Any questions; didn't think so, begin simulation.

A huge flash of light enveloped the farther half of the room. When the light dissipated, the farther half of the room was swarmed in platoons of runts. There were easily more than a thousand runts on the field and more were coming by the second. I looked for the back of the army but didn't see one, they would just keep coming until we were completely overwhelmed. Usually this is the part where i'm supposed to freak out and panic or something like that, but oddly enough, I was super calm, at least I was until the tower cannons started shooting at us. The first shot barely missed us and we had to run like heck to get behind one of the barricades that was 50 meters ahead of us. Lucky for us, the barricade held up well against high pressure laser cannons, but the barricades wouldn't hold for long; this one would eventually break, plus the longer we waited to act, the closer the robot army were getting to overrunning us and taking our flag. I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to sense anything dealing with my powers that could help us. What I felt was an army of robots, but not their actual bodies, but their energy. Every last one of those things were powered by electricity which meant that I could do whatever I wanted to them. I peered over the edge and focused on a robot that was in the center of the oncoming wave. I imagined all of the power inside of it overloading to the point to where he would explode. It took a few seconds but the robot soon started to surge like crazy and in two seconds, exploded into scrap. Just like that, a plan popped into my head to pass this course.

"Guys," I said to Grant an Allyson who were screaming their heads off. "Calm down I have a plan."

I quickly explained to them my plan for decimating the robot army, and buying us some time to get to the flag.

"Allyson, create a barrier to block out the lasers, it'll buy me some time to do my thing. After I do my thing focus on creating that small sun explodey thing you did a while ago. If everything goes the way I think it will, we'll be finished with this in less than five minutes.

"Wait a minute," said Grant. "What do I do?"

"For now," I said. "Stay under the barrier, don't worry your time will come."

Grant didn't look too happy about that but did as I instructed. Allyson created a wall of solar energy, blocking the laser blasts from doing more damage to our barricade which was on the brink of being destroyed.

"Hurry up Jason," said Allyson her voice full of strain. "I don't know how long I can hold this up.

I closed my eyes and focused on the vast amount of energy locked in the robot army. I imagined a wave of electricity spreading through the army, causing them all to overload an combust into scrap metal. The power welling up in me was painful and kind of scary but I held it for a few more moments, giving it time to increase. Finally, when I couldn't hold it in anymore, I thrust my hands outward with a yell and hoped for the best.

The result was better than I could have ever imagined. The robot army started to overload and explode in mass numbers. It was like an invisible blade was sweeping through their ranks, taking them out by the hundreds as it swept through. Unfortunately, Allyson's sun wall broke under the pressure of the laser barrage. The force of the crash blew us off of our feet and threw us several feet backwards, enough to be in shooting range. Also, I was winded, not exhausted but worn down enough to where I couldn't get up quick enough to dodge a laser cannon blast, Allyson was the the same way. In the distance I saw a laser cannon lock onto our position and fire. Before I had time to think: "_Oh crap, this is it," _I felt a strong hand grab me by the waist and in less than a second, I was safely behind another barricade 100 meters ahead of the crumbling one I previously was. The sudden change of speed was enough to shake me out of my daze. When I looked around, I saw Allyson lying next to me, breathing heavily; also Grant who was also breathing heavily but had a wild look in his eyes. Immediately I knew what happened. Allyson and I were about to be blasted to dust but Grant stepped in and saved us is the nick of time with his speed. I was so grateful to him at that moment that I took back anything bad I ever said or thought about him (I know that's only one days worth but still).

"GUYS!" he shouted. "ARE YOU OK?!"

"First of all," I started. "Stop yelling, I can hear you just fine, and yeah were good thanks to you bro."

"Yeah," said Allyson. "Thanks for the save Super-G"

We all chuckled. Amazing how we could find the time to laugh and joke around in a time like this.

"Ok bro," said Grant. "What's the rest of your plan?"

"See for yourself," I told him.

I peered over the edge to survey the damage. That stunt I had just pulled had worked to perfection. The ground was littered with the remains the fallen. More robots were on the way but it was way less intimidating to see a platoon of 300 rather than 2000 or more. Anyway, I imagined two giant electric hands scooping up the scattered robot debris and compacting them into a giant ball. My powers responded beautifully; two giant hands made of electricity appeared and, mimicking my hand movements, compacted the robot remains into a giant metal ball, taking a lot of functional robots along for the ride as well. After I had my giant robot ball, I willed the electric hands to surge, spreading energy to the metal ball. Finally, I set my sights on one of the laser towers on the left side an mimicked throwing an object at it. My electric hands copied the movement and launched the metal ball at the tower. At the last moment the tower tried to shoot the ball down but by then, the ball had already smashed into it. The force from the clogged laser cannons was enough to destroy the tower from the inside out. one down three to go.

"Awesome job Thunder Man," said Grant. "But what about the other three?"

"Allyson." I said.

"Oh right," she said. "I'm on it."

She put her hands together and her face constricted in concentration. It took about 10 seconds but she finally produced a small sun about the size of a fist.

"And you're sure that'll explode on contact?" I asked her.

"I never doubted that you could create a thunderstorm." she said. "Why do you doubt me of all people; i've had my powers longer than any of you."

"Ohhh," said Grant. "Buuuuurrrrrrrrrnnnnnn."

"Sorry Allyson," I said. "By the way speaking of burning, can Grant touch that thing without burning up?"

"As long as I don't want it to then yes." said Allyson.

"Grant," I said. "Grab it and throw it to that tower on the right."

"But what if I get burned?" he asked me.

"It won't burn you," said Allyson. "I don't want it to, don't worry you'll be fine.

Grant grabbed the mini sun (after inching his hand in slowly like a little wimp) and, after making sure that the coast was clear, threw it at the right tower at the right tower so fast that if I didn't have super speed perception, it would have looked like a streak of light. Upon impact, the mini sun grew 5x it's size, taking out one of the right towers completely. To make matters even better, the gravity of the sun pulled the remaining two towers apart which was so good because in case you didn't realize, the three of us were constantly under fire and all the stuff we did was way harder to do than we let on.

With the four towers out of the way, all that was left was for us to get up giant metal steps and snag the flag (ugh, bad rhyme). I thought about it for a second. I couldn't fly, Grant could, he'd be shot down within seconds if he tried to fly us all up there, we'd all need to be moving faster than the robots could see. I had a plan.

"Grant grab Allyson, were gonna run to the steps with our super speed. Before we get there, Grab me and fly us all up to the top, we'll grab the flag together. Ready?"

The only one who seemed to have a problem with this plan was Allyson. I shot Grant a look and he nodded. He picked Allyson up bridal style, and we raced down the field together. I read somewhere online that it would take a normal person about a full minute to run the length of two football fields. Life must totally suck for them. Grant and I cleared the distance in less than 1 second. Before reaching the steps, Grant grabbed me by the arm and flew us all up the steps. If the robots knew that we had infiltrated their base, it was too late. Grant, Allyson, and I grabbed the pole of the flag (which turned out to be a hologram) and the room changed back to it's default setting. By the way, Allyson was so pissed that Grant grabbed her and carried her off. She punched him in the chest a good few times, which probably would have hurt if it wasn't for the whole invulnerable thing he does.

"Last test," said Fury over the intercom. "For your final test, each of you will go one one one with an opponent I have picked for you. Your goal is to either beat them of survive the fight for five minutes. Grant you're up first."

Allyson and I were instantly transported into and empty room that had an overhead view of the room we were just in. If Grant was surprised by this, he didn't let on. He simply stretched his arms and got ready to meet his opponent. Light flashed in the room again and some guy wearing a black X-Man suit appeared. At first I didn't recognize him until his skin turned into steel and he grew and entire foot taller. It was Colossus, Grant had to fight Colossus.

(Grant's perspective)

What's up readers? enjoying the story so far; well get ready because it's about to get 10x better. So for the final part of my test, I had to fight Colossus of all people. I knew who Colossus was, everyone knew who Colossus was. Strongest of the X-Men, metal skin, etc., and now I had to fight him for five minutes just so I could pass an exam, sure wish I studied up for this part. Ok, so I knew the guy was strong when he was in his metal form but the thing is, so was I. Jason may not have told you this yet but I can lift over 50 tons and can punch with enough force to get through titanium walls. In fact, whenever I fight, unless it's against robots, I only use 45% of my actual strength, otherwise I might accidentally kill someone. Lucky for me, Colossus was made of steel. He could probably take whatever I could dish out an then some. I made a conscious effort to use 70% of my full strength for now. If he was able to take more I would steadily increase in strength usage. Colossus and I stared each other down for 10 seconds, mostly because Captain Eyepatch was counting us down until the fight began. But more than that, we were sizing each other up. Colossus was big, strong, and smart but when it all the numbers added up, all he really had was strength. I on the other hand had, strength, speed, plus I could fly. If this was a game of only strength then maybe Colossus would have the upper hand, maybe. But it wasn't, I was a three in one wrecking machine, if Colossus was underestimating me in that clunky tin can skull of his, he was about to get the shock of his life.

"5,4,3,2,1,"

It was crunch time.

Starting out, I charged Colossus on foot. I did this because I knew that's what would expect me to do. That may sound stupid but it made him lower his guard because he charged right at me with his shiny fists raised for a fight, just like I wanted him to. Right before we collided, I took off into the air and rammed him in the chest, flying him straight into the wall and beginning to pound on him with my fists. By the way, you don't know how my flight powers work do you? Well long story short, I just imagine myself flying and that's what happens. At first it didn't work that way, or at least that's not how it worked back at my last football practice but after a few hours of practice in my backyard, I got the hang of it. Anyway, i'm getting off subject, back to the epic superhero fight. I pounded on Colossus for like ten seconds until he managed to catch on of my punches. He grabbed my other arm, pulled them apart and reared his head back. I already knew what was coming; instead of trying to get away, I reared my head back to and Colossus an I quite literally butted heads. The impact was enough to send me staggering backwards a few feet. You'd probaby think that after eadbutting a steel muscle man i'd have some kind of a headache right? Well thanks to my handy dandy invulnerability, I barely felt it. For the sake of knowledge I will enlighten you further. The way my super duper invulnerability works is, well, it just does. I still feel the impact if an opponent strikes me but the impact is only 40% in terms of personal damage. For example, when I was getting buried under laser pressure, it wasn't the blasts that hurt me, although they did sting a great deal. It was the pressure of the laser cannons combined with the heat and time that I spent under fire. Basically, unless Colossus got a hold of me and started to pound me relentlessly, maybe it would start to hurt after a while, unfortunately for him Colossus was never gonna get a chance like that. After our head butt battle, Colossus charged at me again, however, the guy was moving slower than a slug. Ever since I got super speed, the world kinda moves slower which was good for me but bad for the dude in front of me. By the way, I heard Jason calls it Speed Mode or something like that; don't tell him I said this but that is super lame. Anyway, I rushed at Colossus at like 200 mph and gave him a running uppercut, knocking him a good,10 feet in the air. While he was airborne, I took flight, grabbed him by his feet, swung him around a few times and launched him across the room. Thanks to my super speed, he was still moving at the speed of a glacier so I quickly flew across the room and kicked him in another direction. Then, while he was still in motion, I flew under him an double uppercutted him with my crazy strength. I did this for a while until I got tired of playing Colossus volleyball and finally punched him super hard, sending him crashing to the floor making a very satisfying boom.

For a good three minutes, Colossus and I went at it like beasts. I'll give it to the guy, he could throw some crazy punches and he could take a beating. For example, one time Colossus countered one of my punches and boy did I suffer for it. He twisted my arm around and brought his elbow on it, hard. Even with my invulnerability, that really hurt a lot. Colossus then capitalized by attacking me with a furious barrage of punches and kicks. The punches were so hard that they were as loud as cannon fire. Colossus wailed on me for a good while but, just as his hits were starting to hurt, I grabbed his arms, did a flying backflip kick and, while he was still staggering backwards, did a flying dropkick, sending him flying into a wall. Colossus and I would once again resume our back an forth power struggle for another minute or so. Now I could have played it smart and lasted him out for another minute but the thing was, I wanted to win. With 40 second left in the fight, I made my winning move. When Colossus, punched at me with a right hook I dodged, grabbed the arm and twisted it. Then I kicked him in the chest with a powerful roundhouse kick, sending him tumbling backwards. Next, I used my super speed to pound Colossus in a furious barrage of punches. From the face, chest, back, whatever, I hit Colossus ten times per second in and unrelenting beatdown. Finally, I made conscious choice to use all of my strength to finish him off in one more attack. I uppercutted him high into the air, flew up and kicked him across the room, flew around his back and kicked him back the way he came. Finally, in an epic display of awesomeness, I finished Colossus off with a furious aerial rush attack followed by a mega punch that sent him crashing to the floor; also, before he could even think about recovering a landed on his chest, and hit him as hard as I could in his face with a powerful right fist. The hit was so powerful, that the walls shook and the looking glass rooms cracked. Colossus was lying spread eagled on the floor, breathing heavily; poor guy, he never stood a chance.

"Good job Mr. Jackson," said Nick Fury over the intercom. "Impressive effort, you can hit the showers now."

"Thanks sir," I said.

He pressed a button on his wrist and an spoke into it.

"Allyson you are up next."

Before I could say anything I was teleported away in a flash of light, which by the way felt super weird, and was suddenly in a room with a view of the room I was just in. The strangest thing was that Jason was already here waiting for me, and there was no sign of Allyson.

(Allyson's perspective)

Hiya readers, I'm Allyson Grace but I guess you already knew that huh? You can call me Allyson, or Ally, or Sunbird if you wanna but uhh I guess now you wanna hear about the fight don't you? Ok here we go.

After Colonel Fury said that it was my turn, I was immediately whisked away from Jason and found myself back in the exam room. Colonel Fury was also whisked away by the light and in front of me another light flashed. When the light went out, a few feet in front of me was this guy who looked about 25 with brown hair, blue eyes, and a very confident smile. He was wearing an X-Man suit but for some reason, I couldn't place my finger on who he was.

"Hi there," I said to him putting on my best smile. "How ya doin?"

"I'm chill," he said. "Yourself?"

"Pretty good, so do we start fighting now or what?"

"Eager beaver," he said with a chuckle. "Wait for the countdown, then we'll fight for as long as you can survive.

I scowled. It was always the same with everyone. No matter what I did I was always little miss princess who needed to be watched and guarded over like a precious jewel. When I got my powers my parents coddled me so much I might as well have been three. Don't get me wrong, I loved my parents and was so glad that they accepted and helped me master my mutant powers, but was it too much to ask for a little space, freedom, or respect. Don't hate me for saying this but I was kind of glad when S.H.I.E.L.D took me away for this hero thing. Finally I could get some space and have a chance to explore who I was without my parents constantly breathing down my neck. Now this guy was looking me the exact same way that everyone back at home does. He only saw me as a weak little girl who was way in over her head; I made a promise right then and there that I would beat him no matter what it took.

Fury counted down: 5,4,3,2,1,..Begin

Time for the Sunbird to shine.

My starting out wasn't so great. I was going to hit the guy with an energy blast but before I could, he winked and suddenly I was frozen in ice. I realized at that moment that I was dealing with Iceman, one of the most well known X-Men in history. Iceman created a hammer made of ice but before he could swing it at me I burst into my sun form an melted my ice prison and his hammer construct. Because you are probably confused with my powers I'm gonna answer the most basic question people ask me: Are my powers light related or heat related. The answer is yes on both accounts. I absorb light and heat from the sun so I am able to use both aspects if i wish to. I usually don't use the heat related side simply because it's really dangerous and if it gets out of hand I could burn up and entire city, but right now I needed a little heat if I wanted to stand a chance of winning. Anyway, after escaping my icy bonds I retaliated by creating mini sun balls to lob at ice man. I set the balls to explode on contact and which would be effective in keeping Iceman off balance plus keeping the temperature warm enough to weaken his power a bit. This helped me out for a good while. Any time Iceman tried to trap me in ice, his prisons melted into steam before they could even touch me. If Iceman tried to block my sun balls by creating a shield or by freezing them, he was unpleasantly surprised when his defenses were evaporated and he was blasted halfway across the room. However, after my brief moment of triumph, Iceman turned it up a notch, or two; seven is probably more accurate.

Iceman transformed into his full body ice state and then, things got really, really cold. The temperature in the room dropped at least 60 degrees and Iceman began to assault me with an onslaught of hail, ice blasts, and even giants fists made of snow; what a copycat. Now the thing about my powers is, when it gets below freezing, the heat aspect begins to considerably weaken. It's still there and I still have access to the light aspects of my powers but light is mostly good for concussive force blasts. Right now I needed heat and something told me Iceman wasn't going to let me have it without a fight. Thanks to the inner heat I had stored in me, my light constructs, and my will not to lose, I was just able to hold my own. Iceman pelted me with and endless shower of hail and snow but I created a solar barrier that protected me from the brunt of the damage. While in my barrier, Iceman created lots of ice knives and shot them at me. It wasn't the fact that my barrier was failing, but I couldn't just stay like a turtle forever so I took a different course of action. I transformed my barrier into a roman-like shield; big enough for me to be protected from the knives yet at the same time transparent so I could see where I was going. Even with my clear view, the blizzard Iceman had created made it really hard to see. To help even the odds, I tapped into a small bit of my energy reserves and created a massive solar explosive wave. Because it so cold, the wave didn't survive for very long or damage Iceman in any way. However, the wave was strong enough to melt enough of the blizzard for me to see that Iceman was on my lower left still trying to pelt me with ice daggers. I flew straight into him using my shield to make a bigger impact. The force of the blow was enough to knock Iceman's concentration offbeat long enough for me to once again take control of the fight. I focused on trapping Iceman in a solar barrier, kind of like the one I trapped Storm in when I sparred with her. The only difference this time was that instead of just light, I trapped Iceman in a miniature sun. Yeah I know that sounds brutal given the circumstances of his powers but hey, I couldn't let him do that frozen tundra stuff anymore. Anyway, Iceman was trapped in there for a good 30 seconds but it wasn't like he went out quietly. Because our fight had just transferred from a blizzard, Iceman still had a lot of strength left in him; likewise, I was still bouncing back from the cold. Iceman fought against my prison, trying to freeze it from the inside out; it was all I could do to keep him in there. Normally, a situation like this wouldn't be a problem for me. I have tons of sun energy in my body due to the fact that i've been absorbing it for almost a year. If this battle was happening outside, I could just make myself absorb more energy to make myself stronger or better yet use the energy to make my constructs stronger. Unfortunately, we were in a metal enforced room that had no windows that were open to the outside; I was completely marooned and had to rely on my inner strength.

I kept Iceman in the mini sun for as long as I could, hoping to weaken him enough that I could score a big hit when he got out. However, when he did get out, Iceman made it extremely clear that he was just getting warmed up, or chilled up in his case. After escaping, Iceman created a giant tornado made of ice and snow. The pull was way too strong for me to resist an I was pulled in for the ride. On instinct, I locked myself in a solar barrier which protected me from the ice shards but did little to help when I thrown into a metal wall. Iceman didn't let up on me. He assaulted me with another barrage of hail, ice daggers, ice blasts, and basically anything ice related he could throw at me. I had no heat energy left, I was completely reliant on my light barrier to keep me from getting pelted into a snow cone but it wasn't going to be enough. If Iceman got through he would win, if time ran out he would still win but there was nothing I could do I was completely helpless. By the looks of it, Iceman knew it too because suddenly he stopped attacking. Instead, he created an ice throne to sit on, the arrogant little jerk, and spread his arms, covering the floor in frost. From this frost rose an ice army, yes a frost army. They were vaguely humanoid shaped but had jagged ice spikes coming from their arms and backs. There had to be at least 100 of them and more were rising; in that instant I knew what Iceman was planning, either I would be defeated hiding under this barrier or I would lose trying to fight back.

The chances of me winning were not so hot but I knew I had to at least fight. If nothing else, I only had 2 minutes left in the fight; if I put everything I had into it, maybe I could survive an end the fight with my dignity in one piece. I lowered the barrier and created a giant sledgehammer, luckily I could control my constructs by mind, so I didn't have to actually hold it. As the ice soldiers stepped up, I swatted 20 of them down with each swing. It went on like this for a 20 seconds however, just as I was starting to feel hopeful, My feet started to freeze and the ice was still rising. I kept up my swings for as long as I could but the soldiers were getting closer, soon I would be overpowered. I ditched the hammer and created a laser cannon, like the ones those stupid robots always use. I put as much of my energy as I could into the laser cannon and fired it. The blast was so powerful, it ripped right through the ice army an even blasted the ice twerp off of his stupid throne. Of course the blast didn't take Iceman out rather than seriously tick him off; when he got up his eyes glowed like blue flames and suddenly the ice, which had already reached my legs, felt so cold it started to burn.

The ice spread all over my body at a steady rate but it still burned like crazy, which in itself was a surreal experience considering the fact that getting burned was a sensation I thought i'd never feel. The ice reached my neck and by then I was getting desperate; if only I had more heat, I could melt the ice right off of my body. I closed my eyes and concentrated, ignoring the pain that was engulfing my body. I focused on the sun, on it's power, it's heat, that's what I needed right now. So what if I wasn't in direct contact with the sun? The sun was a part of me, in me, was me. I focused hard, imagining the blazing heat of that beautiful star building inside of me, waiting to burst. Just when it seemed that I would be completely immersed in the ice, I screamed a crazy, spoiled brat, tantrum-like scream. I wanted this ice off of me, I wanted it to be warm in here, and I wanted it right now. When I screamed, the temperature in the room drastically rose. Any and all glass in range was immediately shattered into bits. In fact, the room where Jason and I watched Grant fight was now exposed. Of course I heard Jason and Grant panicking and cussing like sailors, Jesus, those two were idiots. Anyway, my stunt had worked; I had successfully channeled the power of the sun and it was resonating from my mouth in the form of a sonic scream. By the way for some reason, even though my scream was loud, it sounded different like the screech of some kind of bird. The newfound warmth restored my powers to full and I easily shattered my icy bonds. After escaping I created my own army of sun warriors as well as two awesome looking solar blades and charged at Iceman. Iceman, though weakened, was not down and out yet, he created another ice army and we clashed in an epic battle of ice and sun.

I left the ice warriors to my army an charged Iceman directly. He had also created two ice blades but I could tell he had no idea how to use them. I slashed at him from two different directions and when he blocked my strikes, I kneed him in the chest sending him staggering backwards. I relentlessly attacked Iceman with a flurry of slashes, kicks, an stabs. It was so funny to watch him fumble around trying to stop me from hitting him but ultimately, he was outclassed. By the way did I forget to mention that I have been practicing fencing and Kung Fu since I was six; hmmm, must have slipped my mind. Anyway, I slashed Iceman down in a flurry of strikes to the arms, chest, legs, and by crashing the butt of my sword into his thick pigheaded skull. Finally, I created a not so miniature sun, pulled his ice army in, or at least I would have if they could have survive that long, and once inside, I made the sun explode, unleashing an unbelievable blaze that that threw Iceman high into the air, making him crash into the ceiling. He would have hit the floor if I didn't help him but I wasn't that mean. I created a bed made of light and he landed safely. Even if he was a jerk, I felt bad about hurting him. Maybe this a part of and act, maybe he was being so mean so that I could learn to use my full power. I made myself a promise to apologize to him as soon as he woke up. Sure he was a little mean but everyone deserves a second chance for a good impression.

"Well done Allyson," said Fury's voice over the intercom. "You had me worried for a moment but you held in there and pulled through, good job. Final test; Jason Fuller you're up.

I was immediately whisked away to the looking room with Grant. Jason was now on the floor getting ready for battle. Whoever he had to fight against, the poor soul wouldn't stand a chance.

(Jason's perspective)

Hey guys, did you miss me (don't answer that)? So those were some pretty good fights huh? Grant was a total beast, Allyson was a survivor and pulled through in the end, and now it was my turn. Light flashed in front of me and of course, someone was there when the lights went out. The guy looked like and X-Man but was strangely different. He had silver hair that was pushed back, like the guy used a super fan to blow dry his hair. He was wearing a black leather battle suit that had a lightning bolt stretching diagonally across his chest. At first this made me a little on edge because if this guy had lightning powers either I would win really quickly or the entire room was gonna be blown to electrical shreds. I couldn't focus on that though, Fury had already begun to countdown and I needed to get into my battle zone. I took a deep breath, steeled my nerves and took a few seconds to think. If went into Speed Mode (yes I know Grant thinks the name is stupid) then I could easily take this guy out before there was any trouble and the fight would end in less than a second; easy plan, simple and effective. The countdown ended and I charged at the guy for all I was worth.

Would you believe me if I told you that the fight lasted only a minute and thirty seconds? Well in actuality, it did but it was still one of the most intense most brutal fight I had ever had in my life. When I charged at the silver-haired guy, he charged back at me only he was charging at me at normal speed, well normal for me. Fury set me up to fight another speedster, this was gonna be sooo much fun. So the silver-haired guy and I clashed and exchanged blows. In less than a second we had both: punched at each other 100 times, ran all across the room 10 times, and had ran up and down the walls at least 5 times. I quickly realized that this guy was fast. Not just fast fast, I mean REALLY FAST. He blocked, countered, an dodged my moves with ease, he was probably holding back to make the fight more fair. When he punched at me, I had to block and dodge like crazy, even at my best he still got in more than a few good hits to my chest, face and gut. There would be no way I'd be able to beat him with speed alone, clearly this guy was only meant for speed. However, I had more than speed, I had the power of lightning and I knew how to use it really really well. On second thirty, which by the way felt more like minute thirty, I pulled out my thunder fists to fight the silver haired guy. I punched at him about twenty times and still didn't hit him. Although, I did notice that he was blocking me at the arms and making use of dodging more often than he used to. I take it that he knew that lightning hurts. I used this as bait and refrained from attacking him. When he did attack me with his punch barrage, I dodged as many as I could but when he did manage to hit me in the gut, I grabbed his arm like it was a life line causing the guy to scream in pain. Then, while still running, I twisted his arm, yanked it and hit him in the face with a hard right fist. The guy flew sideways several feet and, because he was knocked off of his feet, he was moving in slow motion. I quickly took advantage of the situation and pounced on him with a superspeed thunderfist beatdown. I had hit the guy probably about 30 times before he hit the ground. Once he did hit the ground I continued my assault and hit him another 50 times. By the way, all of this happened in 2 seconds so we were only 32 seconds into the fight. The silver-haired guy didn't take too kindly to my attack. Somehow, he managed to stop one of my strikes, uppercut me hard under my chin, and drop kick me across room.

How he managed to kick me so far, I don't know. I did know that he would be on me faster than I could think so, as soon I hit the floor, I created and electric barrier around myself. As quick as I was, I wasn't fast enough; the guy was inside my barrier and had already begun to attack. I managed to get up on my feet and defend myself before the guy had a chance to beat up on me. For 5 seconds, we were locked in a furious battle under my electrical force field. Silver hair attacked me with a barrage of punches but I dodged or blocked all of them. In fact now that I thought about it, being under this barrier was good for me. This guy needed space to be dominant in a fight. By being trapped under this barrier, he couldn't run and had less room to maneuver. I was about to use this to my advantage. After blocking his attacks, I kicked at the guy and when he caught my leg, I quickly used my other foot to kick him in the face, forcing him to drop me and then used my arms to propel myself off of the ground and into a flying kick, sending the guy flying straight into the electric barrier. After getting shocked and spazzing up on the floor, I kicked him in the chest through the barrier and ten feet back as soon as he stood up. The kick had a lightning bolt coming out of it so it was pretty powerful. At this point I thought I had the fight won; silver dude was down, there was no way he'd have the strength to stand so I summoned a thunderstrike to finish him. Instead of getting a crispy speedster, I saw lightning strike a metal floor and felt the impact of a high speed punch find it's way to my face.

For the next 40 seconds, we fought like demons. I was getting better at speedster fighting because silver hair wasn't hitting me as much but I was still not making much progress. For every time I hit him once, he hit me another 10 times. If I tried any grab moves he'd escape easily. I even tried blasting him with lightning but even that failed. Lightning bolts were way too slow. Lightning blasts were faster but not fast enough. Don't get me started on thunderbolts and thunder strikes, if I couldn't hit this guy with lightning blasts what makes you think I could land a hit with a lightning strike from above or a spear made of voltage. Anyway, I did manage to hit him with a good combo. As were were speed fighting, silver hair threw a barrage of speed punches at me, maybe twenty strikes in half a sec. I blocked ten of the punches, avoided three, and got six planted in my face and gut On the last punch, I managed to catch it, grab the guy's arm, and hit him across the face with a thunder charged back hand. I held on to him and abruptly stopped, using our shared momentum against him to throw him several feet across the room in a painful face slide manner. Of course, the guy still wasn't done and got back up for more, charging me faster than I could even react. He punched me in the face, gut, wherever more times than I could count. He kicked me around the floor in the stomach so many times that I eventually stopped feeling the pain. What really took the cake was when he stood me up and attacked me with an onslaught of speed punches. How many times he hit me, I didn't know. All I did know was that I was seriously pissed of an angry; I wanted to pound this guy into the next century. I screamed at the top of my lungs and and electric shock wave, bigger than anyone I had ever made, erupted knocking silver hair off his feet.

This time I was not gonna let him get his balance back. I went into Speed Mode Supreme and charged the guy with some serious rage. I ran around his back and kicked him hard; lighting blasted out of me feet with every kick. While he was flying towards a wall I ran and kicked him to the right, then left, forward, backwards, kicked him into the air, and summoned a lightning strike to plant him into the ground. This was probably enough to finish him or at least slow him down enough for me to easily finish the fight but the thing was I didn't want it to be that easy. I didn't know why but I was really, really angry; angrier than I had ever been in my life. Maybe it was the fact that I had never been as outclassed in a fight before other than Grant or Nightcrawler and even then it was different. When Grant and I fought, we had a mutual level of respect for one another in terms of skills and power. We both realized that Grant was the superior warrior due to his OP strength, but at the same time Grant didn't let it go to his head. Likewise, Nightcrawler was my swordplay mentor and even though I had a lot left to learn, Nightcrawler praised my achievements, and politely corrected my mistakes. The guy I was fighting now was not like that. I could tell he thought of me as a lesser person, a slower person, and that I had no right to even be in the same room as him. People like him made me so unbelievably angry, for the first time in a while I wanted to hurt someone not because I had to but because I could.

While still in Speed Mode Supreme,I charged silver dude and attacked him with a thunder fist beatdown. How long did I punch him? Well in slow people time, about 20 seconds. I completely rage quit all over his sorry butt, hitting every inch of flesh I could. I didn't bother to redouble my energy to keep my speed going, I just focused that amount of time to using the energy to inflict as much pain on the guy as inhumanly possible. To be honest I think something snapped in my mind, for the time being I was insane with fighting frenzy. After I ran out of speed, I slammed my fists into the ground, causing a geyser of lightning to erupt under silver hair's feet and launch him into the air and made a thunderbolt. I must have been more enraged than I thought because my thunderbolt was way more than supercharged. Before the rational side of my brain had time to say: _Wait a second, couldn't this kill him?, _I hurled the death bolt at him. The explosion was so powerful that I was blown backwards and landed hard against a wall, knocking me out of my frenzy. I heard Allyson scream and with a jolt of guilt realized that the windows were all shattered, I might have hurt her. I quickly got up and, thank God, saw that she was flying down unhurt over to silver hair, Grant came over to me and gave me a pat on the shoulder. I heard Allyson sing over silver hair's body and with another jolt of guilt realized how much power I had unleashed through that thunderbolt. I remember what the energy felt like and it was basically two times the power of the final flash I did on Ms. Marvel, who had super durability. I wasn't sure silver hair had as much resistance to thunder, I was pretty sure I had killed him. Thankfully after Allyson was done singing, he got up to his feet and began to walk, well limp anyway. Before I could go over to check on him the voice of Fury spread over the intercom.

"Wow Jason," he said. "Good job I guess, but save that kind of firepower for the enemy ok? Task force operation: Triple X is now approved, report to the command center for mission briefing."

Before I could figure out what that meant, Grant, Alyson, and I were teleported away into a different room.


	7. Chapter 7: We Have To Find Magic Rocks?

**Chapter 7: We Have To Find Magic Rocks?**

At first I was scared that Fury was gonna put us through another simulation but this room wasn't meant for fights (like anyone cares what things are for). This room was small, about the size of and average high school classroom. Except for the one light shining down on the meeting table, everywhere else in the room was pitch black. The meeting table was made of glass so it was see through, it also had the S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on it. Sitting at the table were six people. Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, some lady with brown hair wearing a S.H.I. . uniform, a chinese guy with glasses wearing a white dress shirt and a tie, a muscular white guy wearing a red polo shirt and some sort of high school cap, and…. my english teacher Mrs. Kennedy. At first I did a double take because there was no way that my 1st period english teacher was actually here right now it didn't make sense. But after blinking my eyes several times I came to terms that she actually was. She looked the same as she always did, brown power suit with a white dress shirt and blue tie, brown hair tied back in a bun, and blue rimmed glasses over her eyes. I didn't have anything against my english teacher but I never liked the way she looked at me. Even though I was one of her best students she always glared at me like I was a time bomb waiting to go off. She always sat me at the front of the class, called on me all the time to answer questions, and made sure to call me out every time I had gum in my mouth. However, today her look was much much worse. Her face wasn't glowering but had a look of disappointing expectation like she knew I would blast a kid with lightning, get the attention of a super spy agency, and become the leader of some teenage task force. To be honest it made me a little angry. I glanced over at Grant and saw that his expression was also surprised, plus he was staring daggers at the guy in the red polo shirt; I had a vague suspicion that Allyson also had a hometown teacher that was present in the room. I glanced at Fury who also caught my gaze. He flashed his (snigger* never gets old) eye at the three seats that were free directly in front of him and the teacher group and nodded his head. I tapped Grant on the arm and pointed at the seats; he got the memo, passed the message on to Allyson an we all took our seats. We sat in awkward silence staring down the adults for like 5 seconds before Fury finally broke the silence.

"Congratulations you three," he said. "You have officially passed you're training with flying colors, please contain your enthusiasm."

Grant and Allyson remained silent and I could tell we were all thinking the same thing.

"Ok elephant in the room i'm just gonna say it," I blurted out. "Fury why am I seeing my and possibly Grant and Allyson's high school teachers?"

Everyone, including Fury looked stunned (probably because I didn't say "Colonel" first). It was even more shocking when Mrs. Kennedy started to chuckle. She looked over at the other teachers and I swear her face said something like: _What did I tell you, no manners whatsoever._ She looked straight at me and smiled all creepy like, as if she spent the last few days thinking of new ways to embarrass me in front of my new friends.

"Hello Jason," she said. "How's my favorite student?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Thanks for asking, but seriously, why are you here?"

"Let Colonel Fury explain that."

She looked expectantly at Fury and he heaved a big sigh.

"Grant, Allyson," he started. "I assume these two men look familiar to you as well.

"Yeah," said Allyson pointing to the chinese guy. "That's my history teacher Mr. Lee."

"Hello Ally," said the chinese guy who was smiling so genuine like I could tell he actually liked Allyson. "For what it's worth, you made an A on your last history test.

Allyson smirked and looked at Grant who was starring viciously at the guy wearing the red polo shirt. Now that I think of it the guy was wearing a cap with a mascot on it and…...oh crap.

"What's up coach?" said Grant in a deadly calm voice. "How's the team doing?"

The coach remained silent for a few seconds before responding.

"They're doing ok," he said. "Scott Carlson took up you're position, he's not as good as you but he'll do.

"Cool, that's cool."

I couldn't bear to watch this train wreck continue so I intervened due to the fact that Grant looked like he was on the verge of rampaging.

"Ok," I started. "So is anyone gonna-"

"Going to," Mrs. Kennedy corrected me.

"Is anyone _going to_ explain what's going on here?"

Fury reached into his trench coat and pulled out some kind of clicker. He pressed a button and a holographic screen popped up over the middle of the table. Flashing on the screen were images of Grant, Allyson, and, myself. The scary thing was that these images were at least 3 years old. I saw a few pictures of me in my freshman year, the time Doris and I went to Las Vegas together, even me at my first middle school dance (no I didn't have a date). I saw a bunch of other images of Grant and Allyson too. I didn't know Allyson was a cheerleader or that Grant was also on his high school step team. Anyway, Fury clicked another button and turned off the projection leaving me more confused than before.

"Because you're confused i'll talk slowly," he said. "First of all, your teachers here are really S.H.I.E.L.D agents who have been working undercover for 2 years monitoring you three. Second, we've known that the three of you were mutants since you were 8th graders."

"How?" I asked. "Allyson didn't get her powers until last year, me and Grant got our powers two days ago, how on earth could you have tracking us for so long?"

Fury pressed another button on his clicker thing and another hologram popped up. This time the hologram was showing a picture of the United States. On New York was a blinking blue dot, a green one was on Nebraska, and on Alabama was a yellow one.

"Three years ago," said Fury. "Our ethereal matrix sensor went nuts picking up three dormant but very powerful sources of energy. At first we thought that the sources of the power had to be artifacts or weapons, but when we sent agents in to investigate, we ended up at your individual addresses. Needless to say, my cohorts were less than thrilled to discover that the sources of three nearly unlimited powers were dormant in the bodies of three 8th graders. Some of em' wanted to kill you on the spot, make it look like an accident and be done with it. Others wanted to bring you in right away and train you as weapons for the government; however, me being the compassionate guy I am decided to leave you be and wait til' you were older.

"An then what?" asked Grant.

"Then I was going to see how'd you turn out and if you were good, i'd let you live you're lives while I watched from a distance."

"And If we were bad?" asked Allyson.

"Let's not go there," said Fury. "Let's just assume you were gonna turn out good either way."

"So what's up with this whole change of plan?" I asked Fury.

"Well for starters, you super charged your childhood bully with 1000 volts of electricity," said Fury.

"You're never gonna let me live that down will you?"

"Not in this lifetime. Anyway, we changed our plans up because just last week our ethereal matrix sensor went absolutely insane, multiple impossibly high power energies quite literally rained down from the sky and landed in random places all over America. We knew they were artifacts simply because unless they were Asgardians, people don't rain down from the sky."

"So why didn't you look for them?" asked Allyson.

"We couldn't Miss Grace. Like I said, our EM sensor went insane, the mass multitude of power was too much for it to read."

He pressed another button on his clicker and the hologram switched to a map of the whole world. On this map was a bunch of multicolored sonar waves traveling in every direction across every continent, if this map was supposed to actually help me find something specific, i'd never get anywhere.

"This was the way the map looked last week," said Fury. "Believe me Ms. Grace if we were able to efficiently track these artifacts we would but for a while, we couldn't track an egg."

"But that still doesn't explain why you brought us here all of a sudden," said Allyson.

"I'm coming to that Ms. Grace please be patient."

Allyson looked slightly abashed even though she shouldn't. Fury was going way too slow, I could run 1000 laps around him before he actually got to the point.

"I assume you all know about the five attacks on St. Mark Industries that happened a few nights ago?" Fury asked us.

We all nodded our heads, it's kinda hard to miss when a bunch of super villains decide to ransack five major business headquarters, slaughter hundreds of innocents, and steal truckloads of presents meant for the homeless and the orphaned.

"Well," Fury continued. "When we arrived on the scene-

"You mean after you showed up too late," I interrupted.

Everyone held their breath, even Mrs. Kennedy looked stun. I didn't care; S.H.I.E.L.D. and their heroes failed to show up when they were actually needed and I wasn't gonna play good boy while they patted themselves on the back for nothing. If Fury had a problem with that he could take it up with my thunderbolts.

"When we arrived on the scene," he continued. "We scanned the areas and found residual traces of the energy levels that showed up on the EM sensor. We knew something like this would probably happen, it was only a matter of time before people like Doom started to get involved; unfortunately we just weren't fast enough."

I held back the intense desire to say "got that right".

"So exactly how many of those things are there?" asked Grant.

"In total," said Fury. "Seven of them."

"So that means that the others are at the remaining St. Mark buildings, why haven't you sent heroes to bust some heads?"

"Because the remaining artifacts and most of the stones are no longer in the St. Mark buildings or in Doom's possession either."

"What, how?"

"As soon as we realized that we were dealing with magic, by the way the artifacts are indeed magic, we called in the greatest sorcerer known to mankind, Dr. Strange."

"Dr. Strange? Dude, that guy is so awesome do we get to meet him too?

"Maybe somewhere down the line but not right now. Anyway, although the Doc wasn't able to identify what it is we were dealing with, he did manage to buy us some time to figure it out."

Fury pressed another button on the clicker and a video played. Dr. Strange was in the middle of some forest chanting some magical stuff while purple energy and weird symbols spun around him like a tornado. After he finished whatever it is he was doing, the energy burst in a massive wave, way bigger than anything i've ever created (then again since i'm new at this I probably shouldn't compare so soon). The hologram switched to a view of the entire planet which had a massive wave of magic energy resonating across it, I wondered how people wouldn't notice that but then again I didn't.

"What you've just seen was a recording of what happened on December 11th at 12 A.M.," said Fury. "While you were sleeping you're pretty little heads off, we took action to make sure Dr. Doom didn't get a foothold on those artifacts."

"What did he do," I asked.

"That magic wave was meant to locate and scatter any and all of those artifacts randomly over the world, even we don't know exactly where they all are."

"Doesn't that defeat the purpose of trying to find them?"

"You'd think so but the thing is that magic wave helped stabilize our EM sensor, it will take a while, and it won't happen all at once but we will be able to get accurate readings on all of the artifacts."

"Ok, this is all very fascinating and stuff but you still won't answer the one question that we wanna know: Why. Are. We. Here.

Fury put his face in his palm and shook his head, hey it's not my fault i'm a little curious why S.H.E.L. to abduct and train three random mutant teenagers you'd react the same way.

"Trust me, I'm getting close to that part it'll be worth the wait just let me finish speaking words."

Fury pressed the clicker again and the holographic screen went away.

"At first, our original plan was to deploy the Avengers to find and collect these artifacts but they're all on various solo missions, we can't recall them. Also, on the exact morning that you and Grant got your powers, I received some kind of message from three strange….let's call them ladies. They gave me a vision so to speak saying that you three would play a part in getting these artifacts and keeping them out of the wrong hands."

"And you believed them?" I asked.

"When you've been in this business as long as I have, you learn to heed the warnings of mystical beings no matter how much you don't want to."

"So did these ladies tell you anything else?"

"As a matter of fact they did. They told me that in 10 seconds precisely, they will speak to you directly and tell you everything else we need to know about these artifacts so have fun with that."

Fury pressed another button on the clicker and everyone except for Grant, Allyson, and I were warped out of the room in a flash of light. At first I thought Fury was giving us another test or something I mean there was no way some old ladies were gonna just show up from nowhere and give us visions right? Yeah…...let's just say I learned not to doubt anything else Fury said. Seven seconds later, the lights in the room went out and the room started to fill with a thick purple haze. How did I know that the haze was purple even though the lights were out? Well simply put, I could see it. For some reason even though it was pitch black in the room I could see the table, my friends, and the purple haze clear as daylight. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. You know that feeling you get when you go into an abandoned building but feel like something creepy might pop out and attack you at any second? Now imagine that feeling multiplied by twenty but actually KNOWING that something dangerous is in the room with you. As soon as the purple mist filled the room, I felt multiple presences; ancient, powerful, unnatural presences. I knew from the moment I felt them that they were unnatural beings, things that should not have existed in the first place. Their presence felt like a snake slithering and shuffling through the air and under the ground. I could feel them watching me with a sort of gleeful anticipation, as if I were a fascinating new species that they couldn't wait to study. After a few seconds of being royally spooked out, I felt the three presences move behind me, then under the chairs and table. A few seconds later an arm slammed on the table and started to pull whatever it was connected to upwards.

Let me tell you something. If you are a fan of zombie movies, you wouldn't be after you saw this sight. The arm was dark gray with spidery fingers that also happened to be razor sharp, I know that because her fingers scraped against the table and the sound was only slightly less painful as a nail on a chalkboard. Other arms also made their way on to the table and pulled themselves upward until I got to see the….. let's go with 'ladies'. The first thing that had me scared stiff was their hair. It was definitely hair but their hair seemed sentient as if each thread had a life of it's own. Even more scary was the fact that their hair seemed to be angry and agitated as if it knew that it was connected to an abomination freak of the universe. Their hair constantly shifted from snakes, to dragon heads, lion heads, even demon figured shapes. The next thing was their physique. It was strange because I could tell that these three 'ladies were once very beautiful but had given it up to become whatever this is. Their bodies weren't hideously deformed or anything but their skin was grey, covered in blisters and callouses, plus I could see their veins. By the way their veins glowed with some type of intense purple energy that I could only guess had to be magic, made me wonder what their blood type would have identified as. Finally, the heart stopping most terrible thing about the three ladies were their eyes. They were black, soulless, and empty of life. No, their eyes weren't empty sockets but basically black holes, like the ones in space. I couldn't help but look into those eyes and instead of seeing emptiness I got a different but more terrible feeling. It was if I was looking into the eyes of time itself. When I looked into those eyes I saw what must have been the beginning and the end of entire universes; it was as if eternity had rolled itself into balls and placed itself into the sockets of these (no offense) hideous, soulless, emotionless, hags.

The trio moved toward me and my friends the way a stereotypical zombie does, in slow, grasping, ungraceful shuffling. I wanted to run, I wanted to blast them to dust, I wanted to hide under my covers and stay there for the rest of my life; unfortunately I couldn't move. Was it because of fear? Yeah, you could say that. Was it because they were working some type of magic that kept me from moving or reacting in the face of certain death? For the sake of my manhood I will also allow that as a possibility. Either way, I was glued to my chair and I wasn't going anywhere. The three ladies continued to shuffle forward across the table, moaning and hissing, exposing their black fangs that dripped purple liquid. At first I thought that might have been saliva or something but as the liquid made contact with the table, it started to hiss and burn right through the glass. Acid spit, why not? Once the three ladies were a few feet away from me and my friends, they stopped moving, straightened up into an all fours position, and just stared at us. I tried not to look into the eyes of the one that was focused on me (three ladies, three teens, one for each of us; keep up people it's not that hard) but I couldn't turn my head away. Now that she was up close I could see that the infinite darkness that was her eyes seemed to be swirling and churning. More than that, I felt myself, my identity, my memories, being sucked out of me and into those eyes. For a moment, I forgot who I was, where I came from, my real parents, my favorite things to do, getting my powers, the final exam, everything. Then, just as I started to panic on the inside, the woman's eyes swirled in reverse and I felt everything return to me just as quickly as it left. If you haven't had your memories forcibly taken away from you, then you my friend are a lucky person. My head felt fuzzy, disoriented, and a little painful, I imagine this is how a hangover would feel. It was if my head was trying to reprocess everything that it knew, but didn't know that it knew (yeah I know, it's confusing). I don't know why the woman decided to take my memories away but I knew that she had studied them. In less than a second, the old hag had downloaded and processed 17 years of my memories and experiences, she probably knew me better than I knew myself. Finally, after about 10 seconds of awkward, scary, and painful silence, the ladies finally spoke.

They didn't move their mouths (they were still dripping acid spit all over the table, it was starting to melt through the metal floors) but I heard their voices in my head louder than a stadium full of fans.

"_Jason Fuller," _they said in unison_. "Champion of Zeus, Chosen of Poseidon, Heir of Hermes, Lord of the Storms._ _We are the Norn-Fates._ _We are neither the Norns of Asgard, nor the Fates of Olympus; we are the result of an unholy but necessary union, for both kingdoms are in grave peril and will be greatly affected in the events to come."_

Ok, remember how I said the scariest things about these Norn-Fates was their eyes. Yeah…..not anymore. To say that their voices were ancient, powerful, and forbearing would be the king of all understatements. In truth, their voices gave me the same feel that their eyes did; as if I was hearing the beginning as well as the end. It was as if their voice had the power to create, reshape, and bend reality with a single word. Simultaneously, it was like their voices were a compilation of graveyards, like they could speak death or destruction on any thing in the universe and it would have no choice but to stop existing. Yet, whenever they stopped talking, I forgot what their voice sounded like; this would probably be better for my sanity in the long run. After speaking, the Norn-Fates went silent again and of course didn't move a muscle for another 5 seconds. Then, in a quick heart stopping action the Norn-Fates reached out, grabbed each of us by our faces, and quickly pulled them closer until our foreheads were touching theirs. I had no choice but to gaze into the eyes of Norn-Fate that grabbed me and felt my soul being pulled away from my body and into those eyes. Everything went dark for a moment and when the lights came on again I was on some bridge looking at the outline of an amazing city.

The city was made of white marble and from what I could see, was a mix of ancient Greek and Roman architecture mixed with modern day building styles. I felt my soul self take flight (not of my own will) and was flown over a large portion of the city. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew that this place was Olympus, home of the Greek gods and yes, I was totally geeking out. I mean can you really blame me? I'm a PJO (Percy Jackson & The Olympians) fan, this was my greatest fantasy come to life, I was literally flying above the home of Zeus and the other gods. As I passed I noticed that the city had a amphitheater as well as a Coliseum. There were buildings shaped like ancient temples, I saw a smoke billowing in the distance that had to have come from some sort of forge, plus it seemed that nobody lived in anything except for a mansion in this place. Also, there were a lot of cool looking buildings in Olympus. One temple had grape vines growing all around it's structure so it had to be related to Dionysus. There was this awesome golden tower that glowed like the sun so it had to be for Apollo. Plus, there was this ginormus temple made completely out of storm clouds with lightning flashing in the pillars obviously for the big man himself. One more thing, in Olympus, everyone either traveled by flying pegasi or golden chariots pulled through the streets by huge lions. I could go on all day about this place but unfortunately I can't, I'm on a time limit.

I felt myself being flown up to some mountain that was dotted with mansions, temples, and other types of greek architecture except these buildings were made of solid gold. At the top of the mountain was this huge palace that shined so bright it was almost hard to look at. The walls were engraved with pictures of gods, greek heroes, and people riding chariots. I knew this had to be the palace of the gods. I was flown through the giant golden doors and was whisked through a bunch of other walls until I found myself in the throne room of the gods. To be honest, the throne room was really big and elaborate (the floors had waves of light travel throughout the perimeter every 10 seconds) but the actual thrones were kind of underwhelming. Yeah I know, just because it didn't live up to my PJO expectations shouldn't make it bad but still, I expected more. I wanted the thrones to be super personalized for each individual god and goddess but all I got were a dozen fancy looking solid gold thrones with precious gems embedded in the seats, and armrests. In fact, the only way I could tell whose throne was whose was the gem embedded symbols on the chair backs. For example, Zeus' throne had a thunder bolt engraved in diamonds, Ares had a skull made of rubies on his throne (go figure), Aphrodite had a dove made of amethysts on hers and yeah you get the picture. Anyway, I was floating in the throne room of the gods and suddenly, I felt time shift backwards. It was as if the room was being sucked by a vacuum and images of past meetings, celebrations, even weddings were being sucked into it. Finally, time settled and I found myself in the company of seven of the Olympians. They were all sitting on their personal thrones looking all grumpy and powerful, well except for Apollo and Hermes. Oh yeah that reminds me I have to list the gods who were there. Well plain and simple: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades (who was sitting on a throne made of shadows), Hercules, Apollo, Ares, and Demeter. Zeus was this tall, muscular guy with all white eyes and long flowing orange hair and beard. He was wearing a green loincloth and a golden breast plate. Poseidon on the other hand was this old looking but still very muscular guy with blue skin, long grey hair, and a long grey beard. He was wearing a long blue and purple loincloth with seashell patterns, a long purple cloak, golden arm and leg bands, and was holding this sick looking golden trident that glowed with blue energy. Hades, well Hades was this white guy who was dressed in a black robe and had his hood over his head. I didn't know what his face looked like but his eyes glowed with a dark purplish fire that made me very very glad I was only looking at a memory and wasn't really here. Hercules was a super muscular dude with brown hair wearing a green loincloth, a golden belt with a lion head as the buckle. He was also wearing classical sandals that had straps reaching up to his thighs. He was easily the most laid back guy in the room I mean he literally reclining on a throne made of clouds. Apollo (yes I know this is getting redundant) was muscular, extremely handsome, and had long flowing blonde hair. He was wearing a white tunic with a giant gold belt that had some type of star symbol on it. He was also wearing a flowing yellow cape, and boots made of solid gold. Ares, scared the living crap out of me. He was wearing a black breastplate with a picture of a skull on it. He had a traditional greek battle skirt on and was rocking some boots that were either made of iron or steel. His arms were huge. Not as big as Zeus' or Hercules' but big enough to know that the guy could strangle a great white shark with little to no problem. His face was covered in a black greek war helmet with white plumage. His physique wasn't the scary part, I was pretty sure I could take him on. No the scary thing about him was his aura. This guy radiated aggression naturally. He seemed like the kind of guy who would pick a fight, start a war, and slaughter millions just for the fun of it. If I ever met any of the Olympians, I hoped Ares was not one of them. Finally, Demeter was a woman with long brown hair, wearing a green dress with leaf patterns in them. Her arms were adorned in golden bracelets and she was absently growing different types of plants out of her hands. All seven Olympians sat silently until Zeus finally broke the ice.

"Brothers, sister, my sons," he started. "You are all aware of why I called for this assembly to take place."

"Of course father," said Hercules. "Thou wouldst not cease with such talk for the past two moons."

"I know right?" said Ares. "Seriously, he was all like: we must meet urgently, that fate of Olympus is at stake, listen to me as my incredibly loud voice destroys your eardrums."

"Brother, why dost thou continue to speak in such foreign tongue?" asked Hercules.

"3000 years from now, people will start talking like this and it's way better than the crap people talk these days so I'll stick with it."

"Enough!" Zeus boomed. "We do not have time for this prattle, let us focus on the task at hand."

"Fine," said Ares. "Let's get this over with, i'm working on this new thing called a gun; should have a prototype for it in around 2000 years."

"Humph," scoffed Demeter. "You men and you're toys,"

"As you all know," said Zeus. "Our enemy's forces are rising once again and are attempting to overthrow Olympus. I have bartered with Odin of Asgard and have successfully gained his allegiance but even so we face perilous times and are odds of victory are grim."

"Who are we fighting again?" Apollo asked out of nowhere.

"The Titans, the Giants, 12,000 wild centurs, 9,000 Minotaurs, 10,000 snake woman led by Medusa, The Nemean Lion, 5,000 Hydras, The Chimera, and Typhoon," said Ares with a scary smile on his face.

Apollo's face was so priceless even I laughed which was strange considering the fact that my voice didn't work. Ares and Hercules were bellowing and doubling over and just having a good laugh.

"Worry not brother," said Hercules. "Our battle will be glorious and worthwhile, even if I do have to fight alongside the Odinson."

"Yeah don't look so scared twinkle boy," said Ares. "Even I agree with Hercules and you gotta believe it's something serious when I actually agree with this bastard son of a mortal whore."

I expected Hercules to attack or something but he smiled, laughed, and continued to recline on his cloud.

"Yes," said Zeus. "We have a great challenge ahead but together we will succeed. However, we must take certain precautions, this war will challenge our strength more than they have ever been challenged before, our powers will greatly diminish over the course of these many battles and if we are not careful, we will soon be overthrown."

"What do you suggest we do then brother?" asked Demeter.

Zeus snapped his fingers and a giant ball of dark purple magic that was spinning at like 1000 mph appeared in the center of the throne room.

"I have struck a deal with Hecate, the goddess of magic," he said. "In return for her allowing to learn other forms of magic from other pantheons, she has given me the magic necessary for us to fight in this war without fretting about the toll it will take on our powers."

"How so?" asked Apollo.

"Once we thrust our hands into this small pocket of the Infinity Vortex all of our godly powers will be syphoned away from us and will take the form of stones, they shall be called the Stones of Olympus."

"You want us to put our hands in some stupid magic ball that'll take away all of our powers?" asked Ares. "Doesn't that defeat the purpose of trying to hold on to them pops?"

"Firstly my son," said Zeus. "Never refer to me as pops. Second, this process will allow us to have access to an emergency and nearly unlimited source of power, should this war prove to be too taxing, we can access these stones to replenish our power, it is the only way we can hope to fight this war without endangering Olympus in the process."

"Wait a minute, if this is so important, why are the other Olympians not here to perform this ritual with us?" asked Demeter.

"Because my sister," said Zeus. "The elements of: thunder, water, sun, plant life, war, strength, and death are necessary to keep the world in balance. Without such elements this world would dissolve into chaos, the other Olympians are not here simply because they are not needed."

"Well I can understand that, but if war keeps the world in balance, why is Ares here, shouldn't Athena be here instead."

Ares started to get off of his throne, conjuring a war axe that I could only guess was not meant for gardening. But before he could completely stand up, Zeus' eyes flashed with thunder and a bolt of lightning struck the floor missing Ares by a foot. Ares sat down in a hurry but still stared Demeter down with intense hatred.

"The reason for that Demeter," Zeus started. "Is because Ares is war unrestricted, unbound, and raw. Athena represents war that is hindered by strategy and rules, war that has been safely bottled. Mortals and even gods do not go into average fights with a plan of attack. Instead they focus only on hurting their opponent until they are unable to move. This is why Ares is here, he represents war in it's natural state."

"You say that as if it is a good thing Zeus," said Demeter.

Zeus pretended not to hear this and continued with the council meeting.

"All in favor for creating the stones of Olympus?" he asked.

Everyone raised their hands and thunder shook the room.

"It is agreed," said Zeus.

"Brother," said Poseidon." "When the process is done, are we to carry these stones in our possession always?"

"No Poseidon," said Zeus. "We will be able to call upon the power of the stones whenever we see fit regardless of distance; besides if the power of the all of the stones were to be used in once place, the massive ethereal energy being used in one place could have dire consequences for the the earth. I suggest that each of us enchant our individual stones and conceal them in sacred places to protect them from those who would misuse this power."

"Also, you still have not addressed the matter about why we are giving up all of our power to create these stones when the battle is yet to come."

Zeus snapped his fingers and 7 vials filled with some kind of diamond like liquid appeared in his right hand. He flicked his wrist and the vials flew away and placed themselves in the hand of each Olympian.

"Upon completing the ritual all you must do is drink from these vials, said Zeus. "These vials are special potions made by Hecate herself, they will immediately replenish our powers so the threat of losing your powers is no longer an issue. Before we begin, does everyone have a specific place they have in mind to be the safe haven for their stone?"

"I shall enchant my stone to inhabit places where plant life is at it's strongest. said Demeter. Considering the fact that humans have a nasty habit of cultivating land, I suspect it's options will run scarce in a few thousand years."

"I'll enchant my stone to inhabit the skies where the presence of the sun is present," said Apollo. That'll make it hard for those nasty heathens to track it down."

"I'll stick mine in places where the bloodiest battles take place," said Ares. "By the way, as soon as we win this war, my stone will stay put on the battlefield, at least for a while."

"I shall command my stone to forever reside in the cave of the Nemean Lion," said Hercules. "That is where my greatest act of strength took place."

"I'll keep my stone with me in the underworld," said Hades in a dark, brooding, and gravel like voice that was only slightly less frightening than the voices of the Norn-Fates. "Nobody ever comes they're unless they are or want to be dead."

Hercules looked like he wanted to say something about that but thought better of it and kept his mouth shut.

"I shall place my stone in the care of the Atlanteans," said Poseidon. "They have always been my chosen people, I trust they will keep my stone safe."

"As for me," said Zeus. "I shall enchant my stone to inhabit only the most violent of storms or thunderclouds. Now let the creation of the Stones of Olympus begin."

Demeter stepped up first and thrust her hand into the magic orb without any hesitation whatsoever. The orb started to shake violently and the color changed from purple to green. Energy spewed everywhere like crazy and because it was Demeter's energy the waves transformed into gusts of leaves, crops, and other nature stuff. Demeter screamed and after 10 seconds, the orb settled down and spat out a green stone about the size of a pinky finger. The stone was shaped like a tree, or maybe broccoli. Demeter grabbed it, drank her potion and went back to her throne where she started to enchant the stone.

Apollo was up next. He slowly inched his hand into the orb like a little baby pee pants and of course screamed like a little girl. The orb's color changed into a really bright yellow and started spewing waves of light everywhere, it kind of reminded me of one of Allyson's mini suns. After his ordeal, the orb spit out a golden stone shaped like a sun. Apollo went back to his throne whining like a little $I% * and started to enchant his stone.

Ares stepped up next and put his hand in the orb. Either because he was way tougher than I thought, or because he didn't wanna be a little baby pee pants like his brother Apollo, Ares did not scream, he barely even grunted. When he made contact with the orb, it violently erupted into a dark red blaze, spreading fire, blood, and energy weapon constructs everywhere. After the weapon spree dies down, the orb spit out a red stone that was the shape of a deformed bullet. Ares grabbed it, walked back to his throne and began to enchant his stone. I swear I heard him call Apollo a wimp before he sat down.

Hercules stepped up to create his stone next. He laughed like a madman when his hand made contact with the orb which made me wonder whether or not he had a pain fetish. The orb's energy changed into a dark orange color and literally roared like a lion until it spat out Hercules' stone. The guy must have seriously had a thing for lions because his stone was shaped like a lion's head. He walked back over to his throne and sat down. He didn't enchant the stone I doubt he could have anyway.

After Hercules came Hades. He floated a few feet off the ground on a cloud of shadows to the orb and put his hand inside. He didn't make a single sound as the orb drained his power but he didn't have to. The energy waves off of the orb were a really dark purple and black. The sounds of horrified screams, monster growls, and horrible crying filled the air. His stone couldn't have been spat out too soon. It was dark purple and shaped like a skull. Hades floated back to his throne and plopped on it not even bothering to enchant the stone.

Poseidon stepped up next and put his hand on the orb. He strained a little but he gritted his teeth and toughed it out. The orb turned blue and lightning flashed everywhere followed by multiple waves of seawater. Luckily for me, I wasn't really here. The other Olympians however, got very salty baths. Finally, right before the gods decided to clobber him, the orb spit out a blue stone shaped like a sea urchin. Poseidon walked back to his throne and sat down ignoring the murderous glances of all the other Olympians.

Finally, the big guy himself got up and walked to the orb. If Zeus did scream I wouldn't be able to tell because as soon as he put his hand in the orb the loudest most nerve racking thunder clap filled every area of the throne room. The orb changed not to another color, but took the form of a swirling thunder cloud ball. Lightning flashed inside, first as little sparks, then bigger sparks. Three seconds later, everything went completely insane. Lightning bolts, way more intense than I have ever seen in my life, crashed everywhere in the room. The ceiling, the walls, the floors, nothing was safe. As loud as the thunder was, Apollo gave it a run for it's money. His scream was so loud I couldn't tell if it was him or the thunder. At least he was smart though. As soon as the insane lightning storm started, he created a sun barrier around himself. In fact, Poseidon put a barrier made of water to protect himself, Demeter created and oak tree out of nothing to shield her, and Hades was shrouded in a barrier of dark shadowy energy. Ares and Hercules on the other hand were not so lucky. Either because they couldn't or were too stupid not to, they were left barrierless. Ares paid the price first by receiving a lightning bolt to the head. Luckily he had a helmet on because it took most of the damage although it did shatter like glass. Hercules got blasted square in the chest and even he couldn't laugh at a million volts of electricity. Finally, after 10 seconds of being in an electric field, the orb spit out Zeus' stone. His stone was hard to describe because it kept shifting. One second it was a mini thunderbolt, another second it was an eagle, it even turned into a bull one time. Zeus took the stone, enchanted it and walked back to his throne.

"It is done," he said right before some guy wearing a red kilt, a white cape, and winged sandals burst into the room (yeah I knew that he was Hermes).

"Lord Zeus," he started. " The Asgardians have entered our dimension to negotiate battle strategy, shall I send them here.?"

"Yes Hermes," said Zeus. "Assemble the rest of the council as well."

Hermes nodded, bowed, and took off in a blur, even I had trouble seeing him. Everything went dark and hazy again and at first I thought my vision was over but when my sight righted itself, I was in New York City.

I was on the top of some random skyscraper, fighting Dr. Doom himself. We were going at it like beasts, blasting lightning, clashing swords, even battling in Speed Mode. Suddenly, Dr. Doom blasted me with some type of red energy and as soon as I hit the ground, tree roots as thick as Anacondas wrapped around my arms and legs, trapping me to the ground or roof I guess. Suddenly I felt, and I do mean ACTUALLY felt giant thorns pierce my thighs, biceps, hands, calves and feet. Furthermore, I felt some type of energy that felt like it was burning and shocking me at the same time surge through the thorns that had pierced me. The pain was so intense, so mind blowingly awful that I couldn't help but scream an awful, bone chilling, super agonizing scream. In the midst of my pain I saw the blurry image of Dr. Doom create a black sword with red highlighted edges and stomp his foot on my chest. He looked like he was saying something but I couldn't hear it. Finally, he raised his sword and brought it down in a stabbing motion. Right before the blade ended my life, my vision dispersed into black haze and I found myself head down on the meeting room glass table.

(Grant's vision)

Hey guys, it's me again. Just so you know, Jason, Allyson, and I had the exact same vision concerning the whole gods and Olympus thing so i'll just skip to my personal vision you know the one we all had after seeing the creation of those magic rocks. By the way, listen to what those creepy hags said to me before they grabbed my face.

_Grant Jackson, Champion of Gaea, Titan of the Earth, Chosen of Hercules. We are the Norn-Fates. We are neither the Norns of Asgard, nor the Fates of Olympus; we are the result of an unholy but necessary union, for both kingdoms are in grave peril and will be greatly affected in the events to come._

I was in some type of giant basement. Broken and bended pipes were strewn all over the room and Jason was lying unconscious next to a severely bent pipe. I wanted to see if he was okay but as it turned out I was a little busy at the moment. Allyson and I were fighting against the legendary X-Men villain Magneto, guess that explains all the bent pipes. Allyson was wearing some type of black body armor and now that I think about it, so was Jason. Allyson and I were fighting against Magneto with all that we had but the guy was way too good. Anytime I tried to fly into him and pound him into the floor, he either blasted me with some kind of purple lightning or threw lobs of metal at me from every direction. Allyson tried blasting him with her sun powers but she wasn't making any progress either. Flame streams, sun balls, everything she threw at the guy was either blocked by a purple lightning barrier or sheets of metal. Magneto blasted the two of us with an intense lightning blast that actually hurt me and while we were down, wrapped us and Jason in a bunch of metal pipes that covered us from the neck down to our feet and were engulfed in that purple lightning. I tried to bust free but for some reason I couldn't. No matter how hard I bucked and struggled, the pipes stayed shut around my body, I was completely defenseless. Magneto raised his hands and I felt myself being forced into the air. Magneto raised his hands and a bunch of metal pipes floated into the air, sharpened themselves to a point, that didn't scare me but Allyson and Jason weren't invulnerable like I was; Mangneto was gonna kill them while I was helpless to watch. Something caught my eye in the middle of the floating metal barrage, a double bladed war axe that gleamed with a silvery purple glint. For some reason I was afraid of that axe, I don't know why or how but I knew that axe could hurt me, kill me even and it just happened to be hovering right in my general direction. Magneto thrust his hands out and the metal barrage flew straight at me and my friends. Right before we all died, everything went black and when my vision came back, I was face down on the table.

(Allyson's vision)

Hello again readers, wow never a dull moment in this place huh. So because Jason basically covered all the basic stuff, I'll skip to the part where me my friends, and everyone on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier die, oops spoiler alert. Ohh, but first here's what those creepy ladies said to me.

_Allyson Grace, Avatar of the Sun, Singer of Life, Chosen of Apollo, Blessed of the are the Norn-Fates. We are neither the Norns of Asgard, nor the Fates of Olympus; we are the result of an unholy but necessary union, for both kingdoms are in grave peril and will be greatly affected in the events to come._

I was high in the air. I was level with the clouds, the ground was like 30,000 feet below me and I was in the middle of a fight with an enemy that could manipulate dark matter, don't know how I knew that but I did. She was wearing a purple T-shirt, black leggings, and a mask that covered her face. She didn't look much older than I did but I could tell she was on the side of evil and that made me really, really sad. We were blasting away at each other. Me with sunpower, her with some kind of black shadowy energy. Whenever our blasts collided, they made some kind of white dot that intensified gravity. I wasn't affected much but it was enough to keep me off balance. Me and this other girl fought each other for a while blasting at each other relentlessly and even creating construct swords to duel with from time to time. After like three minutes of fighting, our blades clashed together and we held them in that position, struggling for dominance. The gravity output was so intense that we were both flung backwards several feet before I regained my balance. Suddenly the sky went dark. Thunder sounded and lightning flashed for miles. On another ship similar to the helicarrier but more sinister looking, made completely of metal,and on the verge of either crashing or exploding, some guy in a green robe raised his fist and shouted really loud. A second later, a huge, powerful bolt of lightning bigger than any lightning strike I had ever seen, struck the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and blasted off two of it's turbines. I probably shouted or something but my voice didn't work. I didn't know what to do; Grant and Jason were inside the helicarrier I knew that for sure and if it crashed to the ground, they and everyone in the helicarrier would die. Before I could do anything, the girl I was fighting grabbed me by my throat and opened her mouth. She didn't kiss me or anything but I doubt she could have anyway because coming out of her mouth was a black hole. I tried to get free but her grip was way too strong and on top of that, the black hole in her mouth was draining all of my sun energy. I felt myself getting weaker and weaker, I struggled to remain conscious, to keep fighting, but it was no good. As all of my energy left my body all I could think about was how Jason and Grant were gonna die in a helicarrier crash and how I was completely useless to save them. My vision blacked out and when I came to, I was lying on a glass table.

(Jason's perspective)

I groggily got up and man did I have the world's biggest headache. It was as if those Norn-Fates had opened my head and shoved a whole library in there; thank God that they weren't here anymore, I wouldn't be able to handle the sight of those three hags again. I looked over at Grant and Allyson, who were also recovering from their visions. I wondered if they saw the same things I did, I hoped they didn't see the part about me dying, that was something I wanted to keep to myself. A second later, Fury and the rest of the teacher club flashed back into the room, their faces were so calm and balanced that it made me hate them a little bit. I mean seriously, wouldn't you be totally pissed if you got mentally screwed over while someone else watched all carefree?

"Well that was interesting," said Fury.

I wanted to retort but since I was recovering from my mental hangover, I decided to play nice with Fury for a little while.

"Yeah," said Grant. "Getting a mental short film jammed into my head was always on the top of my bucket list."

"Speaking of which," said Fury. "What did you see, what are the artifacts, what do they have to-"

"The Stones of Olympus" I blurted out.

"What?" asked Fury.

"Those artifacts are called the stones of Olympus. Basically, their magic rocks created by seven of the Olympians: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Demeter, Ares, and Hercules. Their meant to be some kind of energy reserve for them just in case they need it."

"Is that all you saw?" asked Fury. "Is there anything else that you were shown?"

Naturally, I lied and said no in a calm and casual demeanor. Grant and Allyson on the other hand were not so good at keeping things undercover. Grant's eyes darted left and right, plus he was really slow on saying no. Allyson looked straight at the table and shook her head. I don't know if they saw the same vision of me dying but they did see something else and by the looks of it, there visions weren't much better than mine's. Fury probably could have pushed us for answers but seeing as he already got the info he initially wanted, he let it slide and moved the conversation forward.

"Ok then," he said, "So on to the million dollar question of why I brought three high school teens to the headquarters of the highest government agency in the world. Long story short, you three are going to be a temporary strike team we will use to obtain these stones and keep them out of Doom's filthy mitts; whenever the EM sensor locates a stone, you three will drop down and pick it up for us."

He said it as if we didn't have a choice, that made me kind of mad.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You're gonna send three high schoolers with little training to go on a death match scavenger hunt against the world's worst villains?"

"Basically," said Fury. "Why is that a problem?"

"It might be for us, we could get hurt or something."

"So far you've faced and army of robots, towers armed with laser cannons, and you've fought against at least three other metahumans. If it wasn't already clear enough, safety is not our first priority."

"Still, why didn't you send other heroes like Luke Cage or Ms. Marvel or anyone really?"

"You really think you three were my first choice?"

He pressed another button on his clicker and the holographic TV reappeared. On screen were two diagrams of human body shapes. The one on the right had multicolored waves bouncing off it's insides, the other had some type of glowing aura around it.

"Believe me Mr. Fuller, three high school teens were not my first choice when choosing strike team members but you are here for two reasons. Number one: the creepy psychic ladies told me that you were needed. Number two: according to this diagram, the stones have so much ethereal energy coursing through them that if anyone who does not have proper immunity to magic gets within 10 feet of them, the radiation will quickly infect their physical and psychological health in ways we do not know."

"What do you mean by that?" Allyson asked Fury.

"Either something really good or really bad might happen to people who are exposed to the radiation." said Fury. "When Strange checked it out, he said that the magic was temperamental and fickle, as if it had a life of it's own. The magic could chose to grant the recipient eternal life, severe cancer, death by fire, superpowers, the list goes on and on."

"So I assume the three of us have some sort of immunity or something?"

"You guessed it, in addition to you're fantastic powers, each of you have an amazing level immunity to magic. Other than Dr. Strange himself nobody can get as close to these stones as you can."

"So why not ask Dr. Strange to collect the stones?"

"He's busy at the moment, something about stopping an army of mystical demon warriors and mages from destroying the sun."

Allyson gulped heavily and sat back in her seat. Compared to losing the sun, I bet being used to collect magical radioactive rocks sounded pretty good to her.

Fury pressed a button on his clicker and the TV went away.

"So are we all in agreement about the necessity for this task force?" he asked us.

We all nodded our heads and shrugged it wasn't like we really had much of a choice anyway.

"Ok then," said Fury. "Before you can be officially named a team I must first give you your individual evaluation scores and I have to hear a psychological evaluation statement from your teachers/watchers."

"Uhh, psychological evaluation?" I asked Fury.

"Yeah, these people have carefully watched you three for the past three years. From personal daily behavior, interaction with other people, even things you did that you think nobody knew about, if you've done it, they know about it."

"What's the matter Jason?" Mrs. Kennedy asked me. "Afraid of the dirty little things that might come into light?"

I shrugged and tried to play it off but in truth, that was exactly what I was afraid of. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't do drugs or anything illegal except download free music and even that's pretty much legal these days. No, what I was more concerned about was the fights. On average I got into about three fights per month, five if you really push me. If Fury was right and Mrs. Kennedy knew everything i've done, I didn't stand the slightest chance of passing the psycho test.

"Alright then," said Fury. "We'll start with your individual examination scores as well as total scores. Be mindful each of you need a B+ or higher to be cleared to be a part of this team. Allyson based off of your performance yesterday as well as the A you got on today's exam, you are qualified to join this team."

Allyson politely said thank you and kept quiet although she couldn't hide that huge gleam in her eyes as well as that enormous grin.

"Grant," Fury continued. "Based on your performance yesterday plus the A you received on today's exam your total grade is an A-, you are also qualified to join this team."

Grant breathed a sigh of relief to be honest I didn't know if he was gonna make the cut either; but I was super excited for him, it almost made this whole rock hunt thing worth it.

"Jason, based on your performance yesterday plus the A you received on today's exam, your total grade is an A+, you are qualified to join the team."

Grant whooped really loud and clapped me on the shoulder. Normally, I would kick his head off but considering the fact that he was just really excited plus I couldn't kick his head off even if I wanted to I dapped him up and smiled. Grant gave Allyson a big high five too.

"WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, WHOA, HAVE YOU ALL LOST YOUR BRAINS!?" Fury shouted.

"But I thought you said-" Grant stuttered.

"I said, that you had to get a B- to be QUALIFIED to be on the team, you still have to get your psychological behavior report before you are officially on the team."

"Oh, well ok then let's get that done."

"Mr. Lee, will you please give us Allyson's report?

The chinese guy straightened up, folded his hands together and began to talk.

"Allyson is the most level headed, smart, sweet, and compassionate student I have ever had the pleasure of teaching. She respects her elders, peers, and authority figures without question or sarcasm. Even off campus, she shows compassion for others by volunteering for community service events, helping out at the animal shelter, and babysitting the children of busy parents for nothing at all. As if she isn't already a shoe in, Allyson has never been suspended, expelled, or fought anyone on or off school grounds. The fact that she knows multiple martial arts styles shows that she understands that violence is a tool to be used only for self-defense but never out of vengeance. I strongly recommend that you recruit her for this task force Colonel Fury; it also wouldn't hurt to put her in charge."

I was already staring daggers at this guy so my face didn't change much when he recommended that Allyson be leader of Delta Force (the name's catchy just go with it for now). Don't get me wrong, being leader wasn't on the top of my priority list but still, Allyson and Grant had elected me leader last night, (I know I sound like a major hypocrite considering the fact that I objected that decision) this Mr. Lee guy should watch himself.

"Thank you Mr. Lee," said Fury. "Allyson you are officially cleared to join this task force, welcome to Operation Triple X."

"Actually," said Grant. "Were calling it Delta Force, the name's way more catchy although were still on the fence about our official name."

Fury put his face in his palm and shook his head. His expression was all too clear: I just can't even right now with this guy.

"Ok then," he sighed. "Delta Force it is; Coach Dawson, Grant's report if you will and please don't leave anything out I need a thorough read on this guy."

The coach straightened up and unfolded his arms.

"Grant is one of the most dedicated and most trustworthy students I have ever known in my time as a high school coach. As a person he likes to laugh and joke around a lot, but that's only a front that he puts on for other people. In truth, whenever it's time to get serious Grant is the one that you'd want to watch your back. For the most part, he's pretty level-headed and calm. He's gotten into a few fights at school but only when he was defending those who were getting bullied. On the team he was always the anchor that kept the team grounded yet at the same time, he was the one that was always boosting everyone's morale. Even after he was publically kicked off of the team, Grant took it like a man and left with dignity even though he could have gone out of control. I think that Grant would make a great addition to this team. His natural desire to do the very best that he can, plus his desire to defend his friends or those that are weaker than him will be a very big part in the team's success."

Fury thought on that for a while, and when I say a while, I mean he didn't speak for like thirty seconds.

"Grant," he finally said. "You are clear to join the task force, welcome to Opera- I mean welcome to Delta Force."

Grant pumped his fist and I gave him a fist bump on the shoulder.

"Now," said Fury. "Last, but not least, Mrs. Kennedy will you please present Jason's report."

Mrs. Kennedy sat up straight, took off her glasses and folded her hands. We were gonna be here for a while.

"For the two years that I have studied Jason, he has shown a vast amount of maturity, courtesy, and tolerance for his peers as well as his teachers. But then again so does the upper 60 students of his graduating class. Much like Grant, Jason has qualities underneath his social front that he tries to keep inside. Unfortunately, while Grant has positive aspects buried deep within, Jason is the opposite. He has an increased ego and shows content for those who are less intelligent or not as athletically gifted as he is. Jason shows courtesy towards his superiors but that is not the same thing as showing respect. He has a smug attitude in all his classes and feels that because he does better than most of his peers he is vastly superior to them. On top of that Jason has inadequacy issues. I believe he tries so hard to look good in front of everyone because he is trying to cope for the inner doubt and insecurities he holds inside. Up until yesterday Jason has made almost no contact with other people in fact many at the school were afraid of him before his powers activated, imagine what they must be feeling now? Also, Jason is pretty much a thug in his own right. He has never been caught doing anything against school rules, and granted he has never broken a lot of school rules except for the one that involves fighting. Jason more often than not reacts to confrontation with force even when there are many other alternative options. Off and on campus, Jason has left a trail of blood so to speak. In fact-"

She pressed a button on her watch and the holographic Tv popped up again. On screen were clips of me beating the living crap out of anyone that ever tried to mess with me. Bobby, Earl, Cody, Colton, John, Ethan, Devon, Ricardo, Cory, Jackson, yeah you get the point I am a very violent kid.

"-In the past two years Jason has got into twenty fights, broken twelve noses, given five people concussions, and has broken ten wooden chairs over people's heads. Due to the death of his parents at an early age, Jason has developed mental imbalances and therefore is questionable as a person in general. As a team player, Jason is somewhat capable but until yesterday I had no idea that he could actually participate and cooperate with others. Whenever he has been on teams for recreational sports, he has only relied on himself, rarely trusting on others. This implies that he has trust issues as well as hubris. He displays prowess in fighting, improvisation, and leadership but I do not feel that it is enough to allow him to be a part of this task force. Colonel Fury, I would not recommend recruiting Jason for your strike team."

Everyone held their breath (told you she has a mouth on her) as Fury contemplated that mega lecture on my downfalls.

"Well Jason," said Fury who could probably hear the marching band that was my heart pounding away. "Do you have anything to say in your defense before I make my final call?"

I didn't know why I was so nervous, this was a good thing. If I wasn't qualified to be on the team then I could go home, I could be with my mom again. On the other hand, I'd have to leave Grant and Allyson, the only two friends I had ever had in a long time. I was definitely going to be expelled from school so it's not like i'd be doing anything when I went home. Plus, I had this intense desire to see this thing through. I didn't want to be a hero but I did want to help my friends, I had to get on this team. I didn't know why I wanted it so bad but I knew in my heart that if I wasn't a part of this, it would haunt me forever.

"Well," I started. "Mrs. Kennedy is right about me always wanting to prove myself, but that's only because i'm really competitive and I wanna be the best in everything I do. Yes I did get into a lot of fights over the years but i've never started any of them, people just won't leave me alone no matter how hard I try not to get noticed."

"Yes but that still doesn't change the fact that you always use force at the first chance you get Jason," said Mrs. Kennedy.

"Oh, like they would really just let me walk away?"

"That's not the point, you could have at least tried to walk away."

"I still would have had to fight any way, it was best to get it over with then."

"Why were you always assaulted Jason? Was it because you're a freak reject kid with no parents and an old bat of a foster mother."

Everyone glanced nervously at one another, clearly this was not a part of the script. Allyson was looking over at me as if I were gonna explode and to be honest she wasn't far off.

"Don't bring my mom into this Mrs. Kennedy," I said struggling to keep my composure intact.

"Your FOSTER mother Jason, meaning fake, artificial, not genuine.

"Please stop it," I said now on the verge of losing it. "You're-"

"Telling everyone the truth; you will always be an outsider, not one single person will ever love you-"

Thunder boomed and just under the ceiling, lightning flashed in a thunder cloud. I didn't mean to create it but my powers did respond to emotion and right now I was seriously pissed off. I saw Fury's hand inch towards his holster, I wasn't concerned about that, if I wanted to I could take the gun away from him before he even knew it was gone.

"Go ahead," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Strike me with your lightning, prove to everyone just how unstable you are. It won't change anything, you'll always be a psychopath, never worth anything, completely-"

"ENOUGH!" Grant shouted and bashed his fist on the table, shattering the glass completely.

I didn't know who was more surprised, me, Allyson, Fury, or the teacher's lounge.

"Just stop it," he continued. "He was just fine up until the moment when you started getting in his head. So what he has anger issues, in case you haven't realized, people get angry when they get picked on which is probably not a good thing for you considering were all super powered stressed out teens who are all capable of kicking your ass. You call him unstable because he lost his parents but the truth is he handled it just the way anyone else would. I know i'd be devastated and angry if I lost my mom and dad and especially at such a young age but what have you done to help? By the sounds of it, all you've ever done is poke him with a stick seeing how far you could push him, but when you push people they push back. Yeah, he hasn't had friends until now, I can see that but he is a good person at heart and he needs to be on this team to help him grow as a person just like me and Allyson. I tell you what Fury, you may not think he's ready, but this guy pulled this team together and because of him we were able to take down an army of robots big and small. Also, no disrespect to you Mr. Lee but we already have a leader and it's this guy right here with the dreads, if he's not on this team then I quit. Oh but wait a minute, you can't keep him off the team can you Fury? The Norn-Fates chose ALL of us, he's got an iron clad contract whether you like it or not. Your move bro."

At this point the silence in the room took a voice of it's own and it was saying: Holy $#!* dude. In that moment I realized just how awesome of a friend Grant really was. He saw all of the evidence pointing to the fact that I was a juvenile delinquent and still here he was defending me, risking his spot on the team so that I could get the shot he thought I deserved. The guy was an absolute idiot for taking the risk, but I made a mental note right then to thank him tenfold for what he did for me just then.

"Ms. Grace," said Fury. "Is it true that you voted Jason as leader of your team?"

"Yeah that's true," she quickly said but something was off about her voice. She said it matter-of-factly as if she was simply acknowledging her decision, not standing by it.

Fury thought on that for a moment, clearly this could go either way.

"Well Jason," said Fury. "You've put me in a very difficult position here. Your results from your training sessions say one thing, your track record says another, and at the same time you've still somehow managed to win over your fellow peers, by the way nice speech Grant, if you don't make it as a pro football player you'll make one hell of a lawyer.

He thought for a little longer.

"Tell you what," he said. I'll put you on a leash, not literally, and let you out for a test run. When we locate a stone you'll be able to participate on the team and based on your performance, we'll see whether or not your membership will be permanent."

That sly silver tongue devil. Fury somehow gave everybody what they wanted. The teachers got the doubtful response they so desperately wanted. Grant and Allyson got me as a teammate, and as for me this was a bittersweet thing. Yeah, I was stoked to be on the team but now this meant it'd be way longer before I could go home. I hoped we were gonna find these stones fast.

As if on cue, a holographic TV popped up showing a red blinking sonar deep in the middle of the South American Amazon. Fury tried to hide it but I saw the lump of fear he swallowed down. So much for the vote of confidence, if this was our first mission, Fury was just as doubtful as we all were.

"Time to put Delta Force to the test," he said. "The EM sensor has just picked up a huge arcane energy signature in the Amazons and guess who's going to go get it?"

Nobody answered that question, it was pretty rhetorical.

"Alright then, let's get you all suited up,"

He pressed a button on his clicker (I was starting to get sick of that thing) and we were all teleported into another room. This room had another identical glass table in the center of the room, if Grant didn't get mad again, it just might survive. In the background were three tubes that had light bulbs in them. Inside the tubes, were these awesome looking black battle suits that looked like a mix between kevlar and metal armor. Each suit had a S.H.I.E.L.D. symbol on the shoulders. One had green, another was, blue, and the one that was shaped for a girl had a yellow on it. We all sat down across the table and a holographic tube popped up in the middle of the table.

"So," Fury started. "Because we actually do realize that you are nothing more than mutant teens with not much formal training, and because we actually would like it if you came back to this helicarrier in one piece, we have taken it upon ourselves to equip you with some gear; consider it an early christmas present."

Yeah, because a government battlesuit was on the tippy top of my wish list.

"Mrs. Kennedy, would you please quickly explain how each battlesuit works for our three young heroes."

"It'd be my pleasure Colonel," she said as she pulled out her clicker and pushed a button.

On the holographic tube, the three battle suits popped up and slowly spun around as Mrs. Kennedy talked.

"Each of your battle suits have an underlayer of special kevlar that can easily protect you from buck shots. The outer, more armored parts are a mixture of tampered iron, steel, and titanium. The metals were mixed together with unstable molecules so they will be able to protect you from basic forms of damage such as knives, gunfire, and brute force. However, the metal offers little protection against other metals such as: Adamantium, Vibranium, Uru and enchanted metals."

She pressed another button and the two male suits were shunted off to the side, leaving Allyson's one (who else would it belong to) as the main focus.

"Ms. Grace," Mrs. Kennedy continued. "You're kevlar under armor is also engineered to increase the amount of solar energy you absorb by 70%, while you're wearing it, you can put more energy into your attacks without fear of losing energy."

"Well actually," said Allyson. "My body naturally absorbs enough energy per day that potentially could wipe out New York City. Assuming I ever used my powers for one hour straight without stopping, it would only take me another two hours to get the energy back. So, considering the fact that I haven't really used my powers a lot until I came here, I have and almost unlimited source of energy, plus if I ever ran low I could just will my body to absorb more solar energy, so while the thought is appreciated and gratefully accepted, it's highly unnecessary.

Mrs. Kennedy, who was secretly miffed, pressed another button and the arms of the suit suddenly had some type of golden metal arm covering that had ends shaped like taser points.

"These are your solar shields," she said. "These are made of pure gold mixed with mirror amplifier technology. Besides, being great for blocking melee attacks, these shields will amplify your energy blasts by ten and allow for better accuracy on tighter shots and targets; before you say that you don't need them, just please don't you never know."

She pressed another button on her clicker and some type of black liquid covered Allyson's hands. Before any of us had time to freak out, the liquid hardened into gloves and suddenly, two wicked sharp knives just appeared into Allyson's hands. She twirled them with ease and I got the feeling that she had handled weapons before.

"Whoa," she said. "They feel like they're vibrating."

"That's the residual feedback from the gloves interacting with the knives," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Based off of your martial arts background, we felt that knives would be good, basic weapons for you to use. However, if you think it, the knives can convert to full length swords; go ahead, try it out."

Allyson looked at her knives with a quizzical look and they immediately elongated into three foot long blades. I didn't know if they were supposed to do this but her swords flashed with a wave of golden light as they transformed. Again, Allyson easily twirled the blades through her hands and even stabbed at open air a few times. Call me crazy but she seemed like she could beat me in a duel. Assuming we got back alive with all of our limbs intact, i'd have to put that to the test.

"One more thing Allyson," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Your blades can also convert into a double edged spear, connect them at the ends and imagine them growing into a spear."

Allyson connected the blades at their ends, which gave of some type of power discharge when they interacted. Her face morphed for a second in concentration and a 6 foot long double edged spear burst out. The only bad thing was that Allyson had her blade pointed horizontally when she busted out her spear, meaning Grant and I were gonna get to know Allyson's spear in a way we really didn't want to. Luckily for me, my Speed Mode kicked in the way it always does when i'm in point blank danger. I saw the spear burst out which was fast even by my standards. I quickly,backed up against my chair dodging the blade by a few inches; Grant wasn't as quick. The blade swept across his chest tearing his workout shirt but that wasn't the worst thing. Grant screamed: YEOWCH!, something I never thought would come out of his mouth. More so, a thick line of blood was streaming down his chest. My eyes went wide, I should do something, I should help him but I was way too stunned to do anything; yesterday I saw Grant take a pounding from an army of robots, go toe-to-toe with Ms. Marvel, and not get so much as a bruise but he he was bleeding out like a stuck pig. Allyson started panicking immediately and Grant kept saying: Oh God, Oh, God, Oh, God.

"Wait," he finally said. "You're sun powers, do a jingle, sing something, anything."

Allyson cupped her hands over her mouth, sung a few notes and her hands started to glow. She wiped her hands across the length of Grant's cut and it healed in no time; looked like a fleshy version of a zipper to be honest. After the hysteria of Mr. Invincible being vincible, Grant asked the question we all wanted to know.

"What in the heck is that thing made of?" he asked Mrs. Kennedy.

"Well," she started. "It's alloy metal made of both Vibranium and Adamantium fused with unstable molecules and Pym Particles so that it is able to change shape and form."

"Adamantium." said Grant. "That's what Wolverine's claws are made of.

"Yeah," I said. "And Vibranium is what Captain America's shield is made of, guess we know what can hurt you now huh buddy?"

Grant's face went distant for a moment, like he was having a flashback or something, but quick as it came, it left and Grant put on his brave face.

"Well, you can't win em all man, besides not too many people have access to that stuff right, I should be fine for a while, although I will have to practice with my sword skills more just to be safe huh?"

Leave it to this guy to be able to completely bounce back after being opened up like a dissection animal. I could tell he was pretty racked by that experience but he still put on a brave face for the sake of the team, what an idiot. I gave him a fist bump, promised to give him a few pointers, and then let Mrs. Kennedy finish explaining the gear that would most likely save us from being killed.

"Moving on," she said. "Oh, and for future reference, please point your weapons away from each other when they transform, I really don't want to deal with the paperwork that's involved with work related deaths."

Grant and I lightly chuckled but Allyson was still as stiff as a board.

"Hey, Sunbird" Grant said in a concerned voice. "You alright?"

"I could have killed you," she barely whispered the way she does when she's recovering from something.

"It's ok Allyson, you didn't mean it, you didn't know, i'm fine, Jason's fine, it was just a freak thing, don't beat yourself up for it."

Allyson looked straight at Mrs. Kennedy.

"Were gonna have to kill people aren't we?" she asked her nearly on the verge of tears.

Breaking News everyone: Mrs. Kennedy actually has a heart that can feel emotions and stuff. Her cold hearted teacher demeanor broke for a moment before she re-composed herself and responded to Allyson.

"To be honest, Ms. Grace," she said. "I really don't know. You're dealing with mystical objects so you may encounter things such as monsters, and mystical evil beings but if the time comes, you have to be ready to defend yourself; and before you condemn yourself for it, remember that your enemy won't feel remorse for your death."

By the looks of it, that didn't make Allyson feel any better but in truth, Mrs. Kennedy was right. Personally, I wasn't too stoked on the idea of gutting someone with a spear but I did understand survival and sometimes you have to do things that you'll lose a bit of sleep over to ensure that you live to see the next day. Basically, if the time came, I would do what I had to do to protect me and my friends.

Mrs. Kennedy pressed another button on her clicker and the suit with the green S.H.I.E.L.D. logos on the shoulders.

"This suit belongs to you Grant," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Your kevlar underlayer is lined with X-Gene hormone growth, it will double your current strength, speed, and stamina."

"Wait a minute," said Grant. "You rigged my suit with mutant steroids? Isn't that illegal and more importantly, unhealthy."

"Well as far as illegal goes, technically no, as for unhealthy, no. The hormone growth only slightly enhances your abilities without expanding them to the point to where it will cause any damage to your body, don't worry, you'll be perfectly safe."

"Oh, well that's ok then please continue with explaining the awesomeness of my battle suit."

"Well sorry to say kid, but that's it, your outer armor is the same as Allyson's and Jason's but you do get a nice shiny battle axe to go with it."

She pressed another button on her clicker and the same liquid black stuff covered Grant's hands, solidified into gloves and a brand new wicked sharp double-bladed axe flashed into his hands. It was about 5 feet long and medieval looking, the thing had to weigh at least 100 pounds yet Grant was twisting and turning it like it was lighter than a feather. Something seemed off about him though, he was looking at the axe like he had seen it before, like it was a something pulled out of a bad memory.

"Ummm, just for the record," he said. "Is this axe, you know-"

"Made of Adamantium and Vibranium? Yes it is Grant. If you're not careful this axe could potentially kill you so I suggest you practice with it as often as you can. Speaking of which, you're axe has a boomerang function to it, if you throw it, it will come back and the handle will land exactly right in your hand, you don't have to worry about getting skewered with your own axe when it rebounds; go ahead and try it out."

I could tell Grant wasn't too confident about the thought of axe-erang that could lob his head off but he bravely gave it a go. He threw the axe straight up, I got out of my seat and moved a little more to the right, and when the axe came down, Grant reached for it and it landed perfectly in his hand. He tried it out a few more times, throwing it farther and in different directions and the axe still landed perfectly in his hand every time. Pretty soon, Grant forgot all about the danger of it and started to have fun with it.

"Your axe can also be controlled remotely by your hand movements," said Mrs. Kennedy. "You're gloves and the axe handle share a unique frequency that allows it to return home after it is thrown. While in the air, you're axe switches to remote control mode."

She pressed another button on her clicker and three holographic targets popped up high in the air, one in a far corner, another directly above the table, and another directly to the right side of the table, thankfully, not near me.

"Whenever you're ready," Mrs. Kennedy told Grant.

Grant threw his axe as hard as he could at the target on the far corner. Once it was hit, Grant thrusted his arm at the one directly above the table. Although he did hit the target, the axe almost broke the table. Luckily, at the last second, Grant pushed his palm upward, like he was playing volleyball and the axe just barely avoided crash landing. Finally Grant shot his arm to the right, almost taking my head off, and the axe flew towards the last target, taking it out. Grant then, held out his hand and the axe flew back into his palm.

"Dude that was totally sweet!" he nearly shouted. "Can I fling it around the way Thor does, can I summon lightning with it?"

That question was so bad even I had to facepalm him.

"Grant," said Mrs. Kennedy the way she does when she's talking to idiots. "No you cannot swing it around the way Thor does and no, you cannot summon lightning with it. You're axe can convert into a spear though, go ahead and try it out."

Grant did the smart thing for once and lifted the axe horizontally over his head before thinking about the spear. Immediately, the axe elongated. It was still roughly in the shape of an axe, but it was attached to a six foot tall pole that had a shoe sized blade for the butt of the spear. Grant rotated it around a bit, got up out of his seat, and swung it around at a safe distance. He then walked back to the table and sat down, obviously, impressed with his new weapon.

"You're spear also has the throwing/returning function, no not in here, now switch it back to axe mode and let's move on."

Grant looked a little bummed out but switched the spear back to an axe. Mrs. Kennedy pressed another button on the clicker and the suit with the blue S.H.I.E.L.D. logos on the shoulders popped up (guess which one this one belonged to?).

"And now," said Mrs. Kennedy. ""It is with my deepest regret that I explain how you're suit works Jason."

"Aww," I sarcastically said. "Mrs. Kennedy, you're gonna make me blush."

"Humph, cute. Your kevlar suit is designed to absorb and amplify personal static electricity. On average you'll have about 1000 volts traveling through your body per second, you won't have to worry about energy availability while wearing the suit. You're kevlar is also specially synchronized with your outer armor; you're armor will be able to effectively protect you in combat and at the same time, is lighter than anything you've ever worn in your life. You're battle suit is also designed to be friction resistant, you'll be able to run much faster without regular clothing holding you back."

"Ok I am really not getting the whole, 'let's give Grant the worst suit business', said Grant. Poor guy, as whiny as he was did have a point; compared to the other suits, his was pretty basic and plain.

"Get over yourself kid," said Mrs. Kennedy. "You can fly, you have super strength, and now you have a battle axe, try and be a little more appreciative. Moving on, Jason you're suit has special lightning enhancers."

She pressed another button and the same type of arm shield that were on Allyson's suit popped up on mine too except mine's were silver.

"Like Allyson's these shields will amplify and focus your lightning bolts making them a lot more powerful and accurate."

She pressed another button and my hands were covered in black liquid that hardened into gloves. Just in case you're wondering, it felt like cool playdough covering my hands and when they hardened, the gloves seemed to be giving off powerful electricity, I could feel the voltage powering me up, I could only imagine how much power the entire suit was gonna give me. A second later, a 3 foot long sword with a curved hilt, just like the one I had always practiced with in my duels with Nightcrawler appeared in my hand. Allyson was right, the blade was vibrating ever so lightly, it was as if the gloves turned it's hidden features on and without them, the blade would just be that, an ordinary blade.

"Of course, your blade is made of Adamantium and Vibranium," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Your blade can also transform into a spear as well, no not now, we don't have time, we have to move on. Oh and I almost forgot, you're suit has a shield as in like a Captain America type one that springs out of your left arm on your battle suit. It's made out of the same metal as your outer armor so it's not as strong as your sword but in a fight, as long as it's not with a tank, it'll protect you just fine. Nightcrawler said he will train you in sword and shield combat in your free time, now let's move on to your battle suit activators."

She pressed another button on her clicker and our gloves and weapons flashed away. A second later, our watches started blinking and when I looked at it, the screen said: Download Complete. The suits in the tubes suddenly flashed and disappeared, I got the feeling that they were closer than I thought.

"You're battle suits have been transformed into digital data that, upon activation will rematerialize and be equipped to you're bodies." said Mrs. Kennedy. "In order to activate your battle suit all you have to do is press the red button on your watch and speak two voice recognition protocol security measures; let's set them now.

Allyson, Grant, and I pressed the red button on our watches.

"Your first voice recognition security measure is your activation command. I suggest something like, battle suit activate, battle suit power up or-,"

"IT'S MORPHIN TIME!" Grant screamed into his watch.

Apparently the first code was standard issue for all of our watches because all three watches bleeped and in a voice similar to Siri, they said: "Voice Recognition Code: It's morphin time accepted." Everyone went silent for a moment and then Grant and I busted out laughing hysterically. Fury, Mrs. Kennedy, even Allyson hit us with a face palm but it was still funny I mean seriously, how great was it's morphin time?

"Well that'll work too" said Mrs. Kennedy in a voice that clearly said we were beyond understanding. "Now, the second voice recognition code will be your code names, we've chosen some for you but by the sounds of it, you've already done that so go nuts."

"Um, one question," said Grant. "Can we change activation codes if we feel like it?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Just press the green button, enter previous codes, and you can choose a new one, why do you ask? Morphin time, not sounding so good anymore?"

"No it's not that, it's just that Jason and I have temporary code names for now but when we do find our true name, I wanna be able to change it to my morpher."

"It's not a morpher you idiot, it's voice activated battle suit materializer."

"So it's not a morpher, it's just….. a morpher."

"He's got a point," I said. "Not much difference between what you said and what he did."

Mrs. Kennedy shook her head and looked at Allyson. I don't know when this happened but apparently Allyson was pretty much votes as the voice of reason on this team. She was but still, not cool.

"Don't look at me," said Allyson. "I've given up on them too. Although they are technically right, it basically is a morpher."

Mrs. Kennedy didn't even bother to face palm, she had no support anymore.

"Just enter your code names," she said. "Press the red button again and just say whatever they are."

Allyson pressed the button on her morpher first.

"Sunbird," she said.

Grant went next.

"Super-G"

"Super-G?" asked Fury, who I almost forgot was there.

"Yeah said Grant, I know it's not the best name but it's a work in progress."

"Got that right, keep working on it, Super-G is ok but you can do better."

I went last

"Thunder Man,"

"Also needs work," said Fury.

"Now that all of that is taken care of," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Time for you to go, you'll be escorted to a sonic jet on the top deck and will be flown to the Amazon, good luck, don't die, and see you later."

We all stood up and moved a few feet away from the table.

"Ready for this you guys?" asked Grant.

"Let's find out," I said.

"Wanna call it, leader has to call the first morph."

I chuckled and said yes.

"READY?!" I shouted.

"READY!" Grant and Allyson shouted back.

We all pressed our red buttons

"IT'S MORPHIN TIME!" we all shouted.

"SUNBIRD!"

"SUPER-G!"

"THUNDER MAN! "

My body was engulfed in a flash of light and I felt the cool black liquid surround my entire body. I felt an intense surge of electricity and when I looked down, I was wearing an awesome battle suit. Mrs. Kennedy was right, I could feel the voltage traveling from the suit to my body, with this much power flowing through me, I felt unstoppable. I looked over at Grant and Allyson who were also looking great. Grant was flexing his arms and Allyson was doing that thing you do when you're hands feel weird and you keep looking at them.

"Whoa," said Grant. "I feel good, and you guys look great."

"You to bro," I said. "Allyson how you feeling?"

"Pretty awesome," she said but there was still something off about her, something that had to do with me.

After we morphed, my friends and I were flashed to the top deck of the helicarrier. The sudden change from darkness to light was so intense that I was temporarily blinded. Once I got my bearings again, I saw that we were really outside, on a flying helicarrier, at least 30,000 feet in the air. This was a little frightening but compared to what i'd been through in the last two days, I quickly recovered. Some guy in an orange traffic vest named Bob was waiting for us and instructed us to follow him. We walked until we reached the last ship at the edge of the helicarrier which also made me nervous considering I was the only member of the team that couldn't fly. The plane was dark black, big enough to transport probably six people, and had huge thrusters on the back; I could tell it wouldn't be too long until we got to the Amazon. Bob pressed a button on his wristwatch and the plane opened up and a stairwell shot down. Grant immediately called shotgun and ran all super fast to the front of the ship, leaving Allyson and I to sit in the back. We strapped our seat belts on and the pilot drove the jet down the runway, and prepared for take off.

"You okay?" I asked Allyson.

"Mmhmm," she nodded.

"You ready for this?"

She shrugged her shoulders. At this point I knew there was a really big elephant in the room so I decided to go out on a limb and acknowledge it.

"Ok," I said to her. "What's up with you.

"What do you mean?" she asked me coldly, not even bothering to look at me.

"I mean today, we were cool but all of a sudden you're acting like I slapped your grandmother, what's up?"

She turned her head and looked at me, her piercing blue eyes were filled with a quiet anger and disappointment. It was almost hard to look her in the eye.

"Honestly Jason," she started. "You are just unbelieveable."

"Meaning?"

"You're way too violent, and to be honest you have way too much rage in your heart for me to actually trust you."

I couldn't believe this, last night Allyson was raving on about how much of a hero I was and now here she was saying that I was an uncontrollable rage aholic.

"Is this about all the fights?" I asked her. "Look, if it's about that you gotta understand that-"

"I UNDERSTAND," she interrupted. "That all you ever do is fight, that's all you know that's the only thing you revert to when you meet confrontation; fight,fight,fight."

"Look, I know what I did in the past was pretty bad but I am trying to be a better person, i'm not really the violent person you've seen, that was all survival I did that stuff so it wouldn't happen to me."

"For survival?!, do you, I mean…. do you know what you did to Quicksilver?"

So that was his name, kinda cool.

"Ok yes I know I blasted him with a lot more power than needed but I was just so-

"Angry? Jason, you blasted him through more than ten walls. I don't know how he ended up on the floor again but I saw the sky through all the wreckage; you blasted him out of the helicarrier. When I screamed it wasn't because you hurt me or anything although that could have happened, no it was because Quicksilver's skin was burnt and blistered beyond normal repair. His heart rate was so slow, you almost killed him Jason, in a training fight. I barely managed to bring him back and he still needs a few days in the infirmary."

"I'm sorry Allyson, I didn't mean to hurt him that bad I just didn't know how strong that thunderbolt was, how much energy I actually put into it."

"Exactly, I know it was an accident but as strong as you are you can't afford accidents, you've nearly killed three people already, I don't know if I can trust you anymore. I'll follow you into battle and I won't question your orders or your ability to lead this team but you and I...whatever we…..I just can't with you Jason."

Quick question how many of you have been Friend Zoned (all of should be saying yes don't lie it happens to the best of us)? Well believe it or not this was my first time. I haven't really pursued anyone so I didn't have the opportunity to be Friend Zoned which sucked even more considering the fact that I wasn't even pursuing Allyson, or at least not consciously.

"Fine," I said. "I'll just leave you to your thoughts then Sunbird."

She nodded her head and leaned her head against the widow. A minute later, the jet took off; after we got a considerable ways away from the helicarrier the pilot ordered us to brace ourselves and a second later, the jet hit speeds so high even I was impressed.


End file.
